{"id":620946,"date":"2026-04-22T11:46:11","date_gmt":"2026-04-22T11:46:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/620946\/"},"modified":"2026-04-22T11:46:11","modified_gmt":"2026-04-22T11:46:11","slug":"kyle-petty-drops-truth-bomb-on-kyle-busch-amid-dust-up-with-denny-hamlin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/620946\/","title":{"rendered":"Kyle Petty drops truth bomb on Kyle Busch amid dust up with Denny Hamlin"},"content":{"rendered":"

Much has been made of the beef between Denny Hamlin and Kyle Busch, which started out when Hamlin made some relatively benign comments on his podcast about the state of Busch\u2019s driving right now. Busch fired back<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Kyle Petty took the chance to weigh in on the whole thing this week on NASCAR Inside the Race<\/a>. He believes both drivers were well within their rights to say what they did.<\/p>\n

But ultimately, he thinks Hamlin nailed it. Until Busch is beating out his teammate on a consistent basis, it\u2019s hard to side with him in the debate about whether he is at fault or the car is.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you can\u2019t beat your teammate, keep your mouth shut,\u201d Petty said. \u201cThat\u2019s how simple it is. Because you\u2019re getting beat internally. You\u2019re getting beat at the shop. You\u2019re just getting beat.\u201d<\/p>\n

Petty added that he didn\u2019t think Denny Hamlin was out of bounds making the comments he did about Kyle Busch. In fact, he just voiced what many are thinking.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think Denny bashed him,\u201d Petty said. \u201cI thought Denny was fair in his assessment. I thought everything Denny said was fair. It\u2019s what everybody else is thinking, and Denny\u2019s exactly right. Denny has a podcast. Now, if you have a podcast, you\u2019re going to have to sack up and take some criticism every now and then, I will say that. But Denny has a podcast, and race fans are smart enough that you cannot BS them. They watch this 8 car run every week. They watch what it does. They understand what it\u2019s out there doing.\u201d<\/p>\n

And what it\u2019s not doing. Denny Hamlin pointed out what it\u2019s not doing lately. That\u2019s winning.<\/p>\n

Barring a real change in fortune, it\u2019s hard to see Kyle Busch getting back to victory lane any time soon. Certainly not with any regularity.<\/p>\n

In the meantime, what Busch needs to show is that he can elevate the performance. If the car isn\u2019t quite right, at least show you\u2019re getting the most you can out of it.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think that\u2019s what Denny was trying to say: Just put it on your back and beat your teammate,\u201d Petty said. \u201cJust get it somewhere, get it up there a little bit. So I think they\u2019re both in the right on this in some way.\u201d<\/p>\n

Petty changed his tune a bit and offered a little bit of a new criticism on Kyle Busch, too. He went after the idea that the great drivers not only elevate their own performance on the track, but they make an entire organization better.<\/p>\n

He hasn\u2019t seen that from Busch. Not yet.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow what I am going to say about this, and this is I think, this is going to be a Kyle Petty criticism of Kyle Busch,\u201d Petty said. \u201cI think Kyle Busch, unlike his brother Kurt, who would go to any team and up their level of play and make them a better team, whether it was Furniture Row, whether it was Phoenix, James Finch Racing, it didn\u2019t make any difference. He moved the needle on what that team was.<\/p>\n

\u201cI call those guys bus drivers. They go to a new team, they drive the bus, they tell them what needs to be fixed, they point them in the right direction and they work hard to get them there. I don\u2019t believe Kyle Busch has shown himself to be that type of driver at RCR. He\u2019s not the bus driver there. He\u2019s not moving the needle and helping them to move forward.\u201d<\/p>\n

Can he get there? Maybe. But that\u2019s where Hamlin\u2019s comments come in. There don\u2019t appear to be obvious signs it\u2019s coming any time soon.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe saw Jeff Gordon do that at Hendrick,\u201d Petty said. \u201cWe\u2019ve seen the other drivers in other places do that. But we\u2019ve not seen Kyle Busch. So I think that\u2019s a criticism of Kyle Busch, too. I just don\u2019t think he moves the needle or makes the team move the needle.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Much has been made of the beef between Denny Hamlin and Kyle Busch, which started out when Hamlin…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":620947,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[446],"tags":[49,48,634,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-620946","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nascar","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-nascar","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/620946","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=620946"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/620946\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/620947"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=620946"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=620946"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=620946"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}