While Junior-philes want to tar-and-feather Kyle Busch, the man himself seems OK with their dust-up that cost both the opportunity to win the race last week at Richmond.

“It was hard racing,” the Sporting News NASCAR Wire Service quoted Dale Earnhardt Jr. as saying Thursday.

Earnhardt broke down the wreck thusly: “It’s avoidable, but I went in the corner … I blew Turns 1 and 2 real bad. I pushed way up the track, and he saw that, and he almost had me cleared off 2. I got back beside him there on the straightaway. I had a pretty good run. … I went in the corner — I didn’t go in there as high as I had been running — I went about a half-car-length lower, and I think he was anticipating me going in where I’d been running. I anticipated him going in on the bottom, because he’d been running real tight on the apron. We ran into each other.

“A lot of people thought it was intentional. I don’t think it was.”

Uh, huh. DE-Jr should try telling that to the Junior people in mid-Busch tirade. I wonder if they’d listen.

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