Richard Childress Racing’s Kyle Busch has not held back his thoughts on NASCAR crew chief Larry McReynolds’ proposed caution fix. Busch furiously dismissed McReynolds’ comments as thoughts of a person who doesn’t know what it takes to be a NASCAR driver.
The 2025 NASCAR season has had a controversial start, with a number of last-lap caution calls or the lack of calls determining the outcome of races. One such instance was when, during Duel 2 at Daytona, Erik Jones crossed the finish line first, but officials gave the win to Austin Cindric due to his position just in front of the No. 43 car at the time of the caution.
Then again, during the Daytona 500, instead of throwing a caution for an incident in overtime, officials allowed William Byron and Tyler Reddick to race to the finish line under green conditions.
Joey Logano and Denny Hamlin Agreed With Kyle Busch
In the wake of these controversial decisions, during his SiriusXM NASCAR radio show, McReynolds said, “So again, to me, I’m tossing it out there. It may be the recipe for a bunch of torn-up race cars. Owners and drivers may go, ‘My God, that man has gone mad and lost his mind.’
“But to me, one thing that would solve all this — what we’ve dealt with, what Brad and Lee Spencer dealt with last night, we’ve dealt with Mike and Pete — the only flag that can end the race is a checkered flag-waving.”
This past week @LarryMac28 proposed a solution for the last-lap caution controversies at @DAYTONA and Atlanta. On Saturday at @NASCARatCOTA, multiple drivers, including @kylebusch, @joeylogano, @dennyhamlin and @WilliamByron responded to the idea. pic.twitter.com/E2UOW036Jc
— Kyle Dalton (@kdsportswriter) March 1, 2025
After the COTA race, when Busch was presented with McReynolds’ suggestion, he said, “Well, he’s not a driver, and he’s never been in a race car and been t-boned or hit a wall at 180 miles an hour. So he has no say. So, the rest of us drivers that are out there that are risking it all putting it on the line for good shows and entertainment, racing to the checkered flag would be pure entertainment and not safety. So I disagree with that.”
Fellow NASCAR drivers Denny Hamlin and Joey Logano also agreed with Busch that McReynolds’ suggestions would be too dangerous for drivers.
Logano said, “It’s easy to say when you’re not sitting in the race car. Doesn’t hurt Larry Mac when he gets clobbered, right? Like he’s not in there to feel that. It’s not his head. It’s not his body. I think you got to think safety first, right?”
Hamlin added, ”You know, I think if it was the 90s, that would work that way. But it’s just not, and you know our cars are bunched up tighter together than what is used to be. And nobody liked the look that we had from Nashville and nine overtimes.
“That was just a bad look for the drivers. It’s just a bad look all around people running out of fuel, crashes. And I just think if you said that you had to finish it under green in checkered, it just we would run out of gas because we would just keep crashing each other.”
However, Busch did add, “I think if you have a 30th-place car and five cars behind him that get tangled up in a crash, race it out. But when the wreck is happening in fifth place and there’s still 30 others that have to go through the accident scene and Turn 3, you can’t race through that. That’s unsafe.”
