Kurt Busch Makes Playoff Announcement

By: Tom Luttermoser    Image Via : Twitter, Unknown Photographer

Kurt Busch's medial issues have been front and center since that day at Pocono nearly a month ago now.  announced Thursday that he is essentially forfeiting his spot in the 2023 NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs. 23XI announced today that they are withdrawing their medical waver request for Kurt Busch. Kurt's spot was locked in regardless of another winner at Daytona after Kyle Larson won his second race of the Season at Watkins Glen.

Kurt published this statement on all KB social media roughly an hour before this article is to be published. 

This is massive news as now that leaves 2 open Playoff spots going into this weekends Daytona race. The race between Martin Truex Jr and Ryan Blaney has been weeks in the making as to who would lock themselves into that final spot coming out of Daytona. Now, I believe we will have the same desperation to perform from most of the top 30 who are not already locked in with a win, but Blaney and Truex will have to still fight over that potential final spot yet again in the case of a 16th race winner.

Per Fox Sports Bob Pockrass on Twitter if there was in fact a 16th winner, Blaney locks in with 31 points, a sixth-place finish if no stage points, no matter what anyone else does. If he is 36 points ahead of Truex after second stage (meaning he earns 11 more stage points than Truex), he would be locked in.

This announcement from Busch and 23XI today goes to tell me that he will not likely be returning to the track in the round of 16 and could quite possibly be a medically forced retirement of the longest tenured driver in the sport and the only driver left who raced with Dale Earnhardt.