Kahne Not Interested In Mending Fences With Kyle Busch

Kahne crashed hard at Pocono

Kyle Busch emailed Kasey Kahne this week in the aftermath of their latest tangle at Pocono Raceway last Sunday. That email will apparently go unread, after Kahne said today that he has no interest in anything the Joe Gibbs Racing driver has to say.

“He did write me an email,” said Kahne to reporters at Michigan International Speedway. “But I don’t really care anymore. I don’t care to talk to him, or anything.”

Sunday’s incident occurred when Busch appeared to squeeze Kahne into the outside wall on Pocono’s lightning-fast Long Pond Straightaway, leaving Kahne’s Great Clips Chevrolet unable to continue en route to a 42^nd-place finish.

Kahne expressed anger immediately after the race, saying, "That's just Kyle being Kyle. He was probably pissed off because his car was slow. He just floored it, didn't care there was someone out there and ran me right into the wall.” 

Kahne and Busch have history

By some counts, Sunday’s crash was the fourth involving the pair in the last two seasons. After tangling last August on the road course at Watkins Glen International, Kahne tweeted that he was "headed to Joe Gibbs Racing to talk to whoever will come out front."

Today, Kahne said there has been a common denominator in all the crashes; Busch’s over-aggressiveness.

“I had already passed Kyle,” he said. “The reason he passed me back was because I was passing Ryan Newman and (our) two cars… going down the straightaway side-by-side gave him an opportunity to get a big draft and stick his nose in when we got to Turn One.

“He knew if he didn’t clear me, that he would be a position behind. So he just floored it.

“If it’s close, someone is going to (have to) lift,” said Kahne. “When you put someone in that position, it’s up to the guy on the inside. His spotter was telling him ‘outside, outside, outside.’”

Kahne said he is not interested in discussing Sunday’s wreck with Busch, adding, “I talked through every situation with him last year when we had them. And to this day, I’ve still raced him the exact same way. For him to do that (Sunday)… I knew it was coming as soon as he floored it in the corner.

“I was like, ‘You can’t (race that way)! You’re going to run me right in the wall!’  I think he was having a bad day and he just loses it.”