Kyle Busch Replacement Driver Matt Crafton
Kyle Busch replacement driver for today’s Daytona 500 will be Matt Crafton. The news was announced out of the Joe Gibbs Racing camp.
Click here to watch the Kyle Busch Daytona crash video.
Matt Crafton will be filling in for Kyle Busch in the No. 18 Toyota for Sunday’s Daytona 500 (1 p.m. ET, FOX), Joe Gibbs Racing announced on Saturday night.
Busch suffered a compound fracture of his right lower leg from a hard hit late in the NASCAR XFINITY Series Alert Today Florida 300 on Saturday, according to a team release. He is undergoing surgery on his right leg on Saturday night. In addition, Busch suffered a mid-foot fracture of his left foot in the accident.
Busch’s injury will sideline him for an undetermined amount of time and no interim driver has been named for any future races, according to the team.
Busch began to climb from his car without assistance, but was placed on a stretcher by emergency personnel shortly after exiting the car. He was transported to nearby Halifax Medical Center moments later.
A 29-time winner in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series,Busch does not have a Daytona 500 victory to his name. In the loop data era at Daytona, Busch has the best average running position (12.8), driver rating (96.2) and most laps in the top 15 (2488), which comes out to 70.1 percent of the laps in the past 20 races.
Filling in for Busch will be Crafton, the 38-year-old two-time defending champion in the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series. Crafton has not started a Sprint Cup Series race in his career although he did qualify Robby Gordon’s Cup ride in 2008 at Dover while Gordon competed in the Baja 1000. He failed in his attempt to qualify for the Brickyard 400 last summer at Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
Busch was slated to start fourth, but due to the driver change, Crafton will have to start at the back of the field.
In 339 career starts in the Truck Series, Crafton has five wins, though none of those has come at Daytona.
With his brother Kurt Busch suspended indefinitely by NASCAR on Friday, Sunday’s race will be the first Great American Race since 2000 without one of the Busch brothers in the field.
Source: NASCAR
