AVONDALE, Ariz.—How eager was Kyle Busch to make amends for wrecking Ron Hornaday Jr. under caution in the Nov. 4 Camping World Truck Series race at Texas Motor Speedway?

According to Kevin Harvick, owner of Hornaday’s truck, Busch was chagrined enough by the incident to offer Hornaday a ride in the No. 18 Kyle Busch Motorsports Toyota next year.

With the truck series assets of Kevin Harvick Inc. being sold to Eddie Sharp Racing—as KHI ceases to field truck and Nationwide Series teams at the end of the season—Hornaday is looking for a job in 2012.

Hornaday also was looking for a fifth championship in the series—until Busch knocked him into the Turn 4 wall at Texas and out of title contention. With two wins and two runner-up finishes in the four races leading up to Texas, Hornaday had trimmed a 47-point deficit to series leader Austin Dillon to 15, before Busch ended his run.

“I think, as you went through the week, hearing the phone calls that were made to Ron from Kyle at the first part of the week and trying to give him the No. 18 truck ride for next year and all the things that he tried to do, he knew how wrong it was, hopefully,” Harvick said.

Hornaday told Sporting News before Friday’s Nationwide Series practice at Phoenix International Raceway that he had had discussions with Busch both before and after the Texas wreck.

Was the offer sincere?

“I don’t know—you’ll have to ask him,” said Hornaday, who is unlikely to move to a Toyota team, given his long-standing association with Chevrolet.

Hornaday said he agreed with the penalties NASCAR levied against Busch—parking him for the Texas weekend, fining him $50,000 and placing him on probation for the rest of the year—but no punishment could restore Hornaday’s position in the standings.

“It still hurts,” Hornaday said. “You never know how the race would have ended up, but we definitely had a good truck, and we were moving up to the front. It took the wind out of our sails, but we can still get the top two in points. We’ll go down to Homestead (Nov. 18) and show ’em what we can do.”

In Harvick’s view, Hornaday’s fall from contention is the real tragedy of the incident.

“That’s the part that bothers me the most,” Harvick said. “It’s pretty common that people know that I don’t care for Kyle regardless of whether he is in trouble or out of trouble, but that’s the guy (Hornaday) I feel like has taken the brunt of everything that happened last week.”