Indianapolis—A late race crash involving Matt Kenseth and Joey Logano on lap 132 during Sunday’s Crown Royal presents the Curtiss Shaver 400 at the Brickyard sent Kenseth to the garage, and to second in the Sprint Cup points standings.
The day was never going in the direction Kenseth hoped.
“I kept getting on the outside of the restarts and it seemed like I couldn’t do anything right there,” said Kenseth. “We got behind on our last stop.”
“We could stay up in the top-10 most of the day but we didn’t have a better car than that,” Kenseth added. “If you put us seventh or eighth we could run there and if you put us 15th we would run there unfortunately.”
Kenseth was running mid-pack where he says, “some guys were driving pretty crazy.”
“I got hung out on the restart which is one thing,” said Kenseth. “I was trying to get through there and the No. 14 (Stewart) wiped the whole side off my car on the straightaway for no reason and that kind of made me mad.”
“I was in front of the No. 9 (Ambrose) and saw he had a run so I went down to block and he went across the grass and shot me up out of the groove there,” Kenseth added.
Being out of the groove ultimately ended the day.
“I guess at the very end of it the 21 (Bayne) and 78 (Smith) were mad at each other and running into each other and then the 20 (Logano) was trying to pass the 21 and just lost control of his car,” Kenseth said.
Once Logano lost control after the contact with Bayne there was contact with Bobby Labonte, which sent Logano up the track and into the line of Kenseth who was up the track. The No. 17 spun to the inside and came to a stop near the wall. Kenseth was able to exit the car quickly once a small fire broke out under the hood.
“It is crazy there at the end. You could see the wreck happening and I was just hoping I wasn’t going to be in it.”
Kenseth leaves Indianapolis 14 points behind Sprint Cup points leader Dale Earnhardt, Jr.