While Corey LaJoie insisted on race day that his collision with Kyle Busch wasn’t intentional, Bubba Wallace’s spotter, Freddie Kraft, disagreed. Speaking on the Door Bumper Clear podcast, Kraft compared it to a recent incident, suggesting it resembled the 'reckless driving' for which Layne Riggs in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series was penalized after he caused a wreck involving Stefan Parsons at Nashville Superspeedway.
During the Pocono Raceway event, the Spire Motorsports driver inadvertently spun Richard Childress Racing’s Kyle Busch after a restart with 40 laps remaining in The Great American Getaway 400. Corey LaJoie’s #7 Chevy clipped the left rear of Busch’s #8 car, sending it careening into the tightly packed field.
The incident resulted in a DNF for Busch, who finished P32, while LaJoie secured a 19th-place finish. In his post-race comments, Corey LaJoie acknowledged the frustration of the other drivers involved but maintained, "I didn’t feel like it was a bonehead move."
However, Bubba Wallace's spotter opined:
"This guy just recklessly goes in there, wipes Kyle Busch out. [....] : This guy drives in there, cleans him out, and wrecks six other guys for no reason. [...] You cannot turn a guy into one on a restart of Pocono, like, intentionally."
"And that looked to me like it was intentional. That's my issue is I'm not saying that Corey should have got a penalty. But a couple weeks ago, you gave Riggs kid a penalty for reckless driving. This is one of the most reckless things you could do on the race track."
While TJ Majors tried to stay neutral, giving Corey LaJoie the benefit of the doubt saying, "Maybe he did mess up," Freddie Kraft was more decisive in his viewpoint. Kraft believed the move looked intentional. However, Bubba Wallace's spotter wasn't alone in thinking that Corey LaJoie’s collision with Kyle Busch was deliberate.
Jeff Burton calls out Corey LaJoie for wiping Kyle Busch out
While on the radio Corey LaJoie was heard saying, "He [Kyle Busch] hooked himself," Jeff Burton, who was up in the broadcast booth, did not like what LaJoie said on his radio. He watched the replay again in his booth and said [via Heavy]:
"Well, that right there doesn’t, to be honest with you, if I’m not only Kyle Busch but all the other guys that got in the wreck, I’m really unhappy with that because he hooked himself. [...] Right here. This big block, right? That’s a big block. That’s an aggressive block. But this — Kyle Busch didn’t hook himself there. He got hooked there and if LaJoie thinks he deserved that, then LaJoie has the prerogative to do it."
Furthermore, Burton also stated that the triangular racetrack is not the place to hook somebody, especially when the drivers are flying down at the turn 1.