Who would’ve thought at the start of this season that there’d be beef between Kyle Busch and a former driver of his? But that’s exactly where we are at after the two-time Cup champion and former KBM driver Chandler Smith had a coming together in Phoenix.

Interestingly enough, the two were on the same team when the incident occurred, which compromised both of their race outcomes.

A few weeks from that, the young Xfinity driver who is now running for Kaulig Racing revealed that what happened in Phoenix was something he learned from Busch himself. Smith also claimed Busch hasn’t been responding to his attempts to have a conversation with him.

And recently, it was Busch who had a response that more or less clears where he stands on the incident.

Kyle Busch subtly calls out Chandler Smith for his hypocrisy on the subject of respect

In a recent interaction with the media, Busch was asked about Chandler Smith’s claims of him having the utmost respect for his former boss and his unanswered calls to get in touch with him.

“I’ve pretty much already moved on,” Busch said. “I think it will come at due time. But if you had the utmost respect for someone, you wouldn’t race them the way I got raced.”

“I’ll leave it at that.”

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Chandler Smith thinks the mutual respect with Busch was “almost thrown out”

Speaking in the recent episode of the Door Bumper Clear podcast, Smith opened up on several aspects of his history and the present with Kyle Busch in the light of their Phoenix incident.

At one point, the young driver addressed the subject of mutual respect between him and Busch, along with where they stand now.

“The respect that we had, it was almost thrown out the window because of that one incident. We didn’t even talk it over, didn’t get each other’s side of it, didn’t say, ‘Alright, let’s agree to disagree and move on and keep trying to build this organization,'” Smith said.

With both Smith and Busch’s statements on each other locked in, who do you think is responsible for what happened on the track?

Let us know in the comments below.

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