NASCAR investigates Pocono incident between Corey Lajoie and Kyle Busch

NASCAR does not currently believe anything malicious occurred in Sunday’s incident between Corey Lajoie and Kyle Busch at Pocono Raceway, but will be carefully investigating the incident during Tuesday’s meetings.

The incident occurred during a restart on lap 120. Busch blocked a charge from below on Lajoie. Busch made a second charge and at best Lajoie couldn’t get off the ground and at worst the two-time champion was beaten.

Busch spun toward traffic and hit Ryan Preece, Harrison Burton, AJ Allmendinger and Ricky Stenhouse Jr.

Speaking on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio Tuesday morning, NASCAR Cup Series executive director Brad Moran said he does not expect a penalty for Lajoie.

“We believe it was a tough race, but we’ll talk more about it later today, like anything that catches our attention,” Moran said. “It caught our attention and we reviewed it a couple of times during the race after it happened, but we’ll take a closer look at the video, the audio and the SMT. At this point, we believe it was a tough race and that a couple of guys didn’t give each other room. Sitting here, we don’t believe it was intentional, but we’ll do due diligence.”

A day after the crash, Lajoie gave an overview of what he thought happened on his podcast “Stacking Pennies.”

“I actually feel bad for Kyle,” LaJoie said. “I don’t want to ruin his day. Randall Burnett, we’re friends. I don’t want to ruin anyone’s day. It wasn’t until I looked at the 8’s car that I realized how it all happened. OK, did you hear how on the ball he was there? When you’re that deep in traffic, you’re between fourth and fifth gear.

“And I was planning on getting back behind him somehow, but at the same time I wanted to kind of catch up and get behind him when he was in the chip. … As long as he was in the chip, I didn’t expect his car to lose so much momentum compared to mine. I spun him out and passed several good cars behind me, which I really regret on Monday.”