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Kurt Busch Questions NASCAR Not Penalizing His Brother While Hitting Ryan Preece With A Fine And Points Penalty

May 12, 2026  ·
  John Trent

Kurt Busch shared his thoughts on NASCAR’s penalty against Ryan Preece while at the same time not penalizing his brother, Kyle Busch, for what occurred at Texas Motor Speedway.

Busch appeared on the Door Bumper Clear podcast where he was asked if Preece’s comments on the radio were the problem and why he got penalized. He answered, “Well, that’s the problem of the problem. NASCAR shouldn’t go off of what someone says on the radio. They should be able to still look at the eyeball test.”

“What my brother did to John Hunter was the same exact thing,” he continued. “And there could have been maybe one or two words. Now, you’re in like a court room. ‘You may have’ or ‘You could have’. You change one little word in a sentence. But to have Preece penalized, not my brother. I mean, I have no problems saying it. They both should have been in the same dog house.” 

NASCAR penalized Preece for violating Sections 4.3 and 4.4.A of its rulebook, which states that “wrecking or spinning another vehicle, whether or not that vehicle is removed from competition as a result” is a punishable offense. 

On Hauler Talk, NASCAR’s Managing Director of Racing Communications Mike Forde explained that the penalty was issued based on Preece’s in-car communications about Gibbs , “He said what he said and then he did what he said. So in our view it was intentionally wrecking another vehicle. That’s where we landed. … He can appeal. That appeal process will play out. We’ll have that process at the R&D Center and we’ll see where that goes if there is an appeal.”

Following a restart on lap 101, Gibbs spun hard into the wall seemingly off the nose of Ryan Preece. As the two were coming through turns 3 and 4, Gibbs spun with Preece right on his bumper and slammed hard into the outside wall while the two were racing each other back around the 20th position.

Preece had previously expressed frustration with Gibbs earlier in the race. He was heard on the radio saying, “What a [expletive] idiot that kid is! He is so lucky his car is so [expletive] fast!”

After a caution flew, Preece then promised, “Alright, when I get to that 54, I’m done with him. [Expletive] idiot. … That car is so [expletive] fast. [Expletive] pisses me off. Stupid. I’m gonna vent for 15 seconds. I can’t stand when idiots like him have fast race cars that they can do stupid [expletive] and get away with it. End of rant.”

After Gibbs wrecked, Preece said over the radio, “Never touched him.” He also said that, “He can come on over and see me later.”

Following the race, Preece told FrontStretch, “I’ll be honest with you. I hate that he wrecked, but decisions you make on the race track there are repercussions. And I try to race everybody with an amount of respect that I like in return and when you don’t do that, I’m not going to cut you a break. And that’s what happened.”

He reiterated his belief that he never touched Gibbs in an interview with SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, “Basically, I’ll just kinda put it the way I said in the post-race interview yesterday, which is: There’s moments that there are people that you can race with respect around and cut breaks to. I can think of multiple times yesterday that instead of putting another driver in a pretty tough spot you make the decision not to do that. I just grew up racing against people that I learned that lesson a long long time ago when I was a lot younger. Sometimes I question if those same lessons are learned by the time you get to Cup.

“So for me, it was more along the lines, he almost or pretty much was very close clear getting into 3 and I could lift, but I didn’t. I was right there and I felt like he came down and I was not going to cut him a break because in the past him and I have had problems,” he continued. “I’ve got a little bit of a short fuse with him and I and how we’re racing. And that was just one of those situations that could I cut him a break? Probably could’ve, but I didn’t.”

Preece then reiterated that he didn’t think he made contact with Gibbs, “And ultimately I didn’t feel like I hit him. I felt like I stayed right on him and he got loose and from there on unfortunately he wrecked. But I think that’s just the way it is. The decisions you make on the race track, people are going to make their decisions back. And that’s just the way racing is. That’s no different than what is from what you see at your local race tracks of people there or regionally or whatever it is. It’s been around as long as time. It’s kind of an unwritten code or unspoken thing. That’s kind of the way it went down.”

Forde indicated that the one of the reasons why it punished Preece and not Kyle Busch was due to his comments over the radio. He was asked, “Does it just come down to the fact that the difference between this and Preece was there is no audio, there is no evidence of him vowing retribution and acting on it? That’s the difference?”

Forde replied, “That’s the difference. And the SMT data was different too. There was no audio that came out and said, ‘I’m going to wreck the 42.’ And then he wrecked the 42. So that’s one. And then two, is the SMT data that showed-. Well, one, it didn’t show anything that suggested that he did do it, and also the fact that his steering was so jacked it showed at least there was a plausible chance that his car had some damage that led to what happened.”

As for Busch, he and Nemechek came together racing down the back stretch nd they both got into the wall after hitting each other. After they began to recover and drive into the corner, Busch appeared to retaliate against Nemechek by driving up into his side. The contact sent Nemechek crashing hard into the outside wall. 

Forde explained why there was no penalty, “We did the same thing, video, audio, and SMT data. Talked about Scott Miller, former Senior VP of Competition for NASCAR, now moved into the role of Competition Strategist. So he’s still part of our team and one of his responsibilities is when we have incidents like this is to dive into the SMT data. He has a long history with that and so we rely on his expertise when we do that. And the SMT data is largely what played a role for us in this decision,” he explained.

Regarding the seeming retaliation from Busch after the initial contact, Forde said, “It was interesting, Elton Sawyer, before I came over here, was saying that the data told us that after the incident he was turning the wheel all the way left just to go straight. We had a feeling that he had some pretty significant damage and it was to Letarte’s point was inconclusive on if that was a damaged vehicle that caused him to get into the 42 or if it was intentional. The SMT data there was zero things, in our opinion, that said he did this intentionally and it rose to the level of penalty. So that’s why we landed on no penalty there.”

RFK Racing announced to social media on May 7th that it would appeal the penalty, “RFK Racing has decided to appeal the penalties issued by NASCAR against Ryan Preece.”

“We appreciate the opportunity to share our findings with the National Motorsports Appeals Panel at the appropriate time,” it added. “Additionally, our organization respectfully embraces the forum provided by NASCAR to present our case.”

In press conference ahead of the Cup race at Watkins Glen, Preece addressed the penalty and appeal, “Honestly, a bit surprised. But I’m thankful that NASCAR has an appeals process so that I feel like I can be heard and let that process play itself out.”

NEXT: Kurt Busch Explains What One Of The Biggest Problems With Current-Day NASCAR Is

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Author: John Trent