After a clean first stage of racing in the penultimate race of the NASCAR Cup Series regular season at Richmond Raceway, three close cautions snowballed into a crash that collected 13 drivers.
A lap into the third restart of the night, Chase Briscoe was looking to the inside of Kyle Larson when he was forced to check up, placing him in Kyle Busch's lane and resulting in him turning in front of a closely packed field on the Richmond front stretch. The drivers who had no time to respond included Ross Chastain, Brad Keselowski, Justin Haley, Kyle Busch, Denny Hamlin, Chase Briscoe, William Byron, Todd Gilliland, Cole Custer, and Erik Jones.
Chase Elliott, who entered the race weekend second in the regular season championship and the best bet to bring a challenge to his teammate Byron, found himself missing the initial mayhem before being collected by Busch, who was exiting the scrum. Busch right-reared Elliott, sending the 2020 champion into the wall and ending his night. Before this crash on lap 199 of Richmond's 400, Elliott had completed all but one lap of the NASCAR Cup season to date.
I have no idea what happened still," Elliott told NBC's Kim Coon after exiting the care center. "Obviously, I saw them crashing, and we were all stacking up trying to get stopped. After the wreck was over, I thought we were done wrecking. I was just trying to squeak by, and I guess somebody didn’t know I was done there. I guess Kyle just didn’t know I was to the left, whoever was next to me and myself, we were trying to get by the accident."
With Elliott out of the race, Byron just has to finish 62 points ahead of Denny Hamlin and Christopher Bell. He entered the weekend 61 ahead of Hamlin and 63 in front of Bell. Hamlin sustained more damage than Byron in the lap-199 wreck, and Bell had a bad pit stop before the start of the final stage to restart 25th. Byron, on fresh tires and with his car seemingly unaffected by the crash, moved from 27th to 18th quickly on the fourth caution's restart.
You Might Also Like
Comments