The aggression ramped up in the middle of the pack as the Brickyard 400 approached halfway, and it was William Byron who got the short end of the stick when it all went wrong. After a restart on lap 75 of 160, Byron ended up stranded in a destroyed car in the backstretch grass.
The wreck arose from the battle for fifteenth on track. When Chase Briscoe checked up, Byron lost momentum in the No. 24 and Harrison Burton drove his No. 21 to his inside. Seeing his chance, Ryan Preece also put the nose of his car into the middle of the battle, taking it three wide on the exit of the corner. That ended up being too wide, and as all three cars straightened out, they came together.
The wreck ultimately sent Byron hard into the outside wall and then careening into the inside wall, on a section of the track where the outside is not a SAFER barrier to cushion the impact. As he came around the track, Byron’s car also collected the nose of AJ Allmendinger, sending him into the inside wall.
Once he got out of his car, Byron was critical of the hard racing back in the pack, where he ended up based on pit strategy, and particularly of the No. 14 of Chase Briscoe who lose momentum after an aggressive block on Byron, which enabled Burton and Preece to get to Byron’s inside.
“We got back there in traffic,” Byron explained. “It seemed like the pit stop sequence didn’t go our way there. The No. 14 was just being a squirrel back in the pack. He drove up in front of me. I had to lift way off the corner, and I got run over.
“Hate it for our team. We had an amazing No. 24 Valvoline Chevy. We were running there on the right strategy in the top two or three; got back there in the pack and got wrecked. Appreciate everybody at Valvoline, Chevrolet. We had a great car. We’ll go on over the break and try to get some more wins.”
The wreck meant that there was no chance of continuing Hendrick Motorsports’ streak of getting the No. 24 in victory lane at Indianapolis every ten years from 1994. Byron acknowledged that crashing out at the Brickyard was unusually disappointing but stressed that the team puts carries just as much emotion on every race.
“Yeah, I mean it sucks. We put a lot of effort into this race, but we put a lot of effort in every week,” Blaney said.
The other drivers who incurred damage, AJ Allmendinger and Harrison Burton, both also ended up out of the race. For Allmendinger, who’s running full-time in the Xfinity Series this season and only participating in select Cup events, the result felt like a wasted opportunity.
“I just saw everyone start checking up,” Allmendinger described the wreck. I actually saw the No. 21 on the bottom, so I went to go to the middle. Right as I went to the middle, the No. 24 was coming across. It’s just kind of the story of the year…wrong place, wrong time.”
Allmendinger echoed Byron’s comments that the middle and back of the pack was particularly aggressive on restarts, even less than halfway through the race when the wreck happened.
“I mean, on the restarts, everyone is going to be aggressive because you know that’s the time to make up the most starts. It’s tough to pass,” he explained it. “The way the wreck happened, it was kind of out of my control.”
