Auto Club Speedway, at least as we know it, will be gone after Sunday. The facility will be redone, and the track reconfigured to a shorter length from its 2-mile superspeedway oval.
The final NASCAR Cup race there Sunday broke a couple of records; not only did winner Kyle Busch break a tie with Richard Petty for most seasons with consecutive wins, 19, but the race featured a race multicar crash, the Big One, normally seen at places such Talladega and Daytona.
On a restart on lap 88 on a restart the field checked up coming to the green and an accordion effect crashed cars on both rows. In all, 9 cars were involved including Aric Almirola, Tyler Reddick, Ryan Preece and polesitter Christopher Bell. Those cars were forced to the garage in the largest crash in a cup race in the speedway’s history dating back to its opening in 1997.
“It’s kind of stupid, to be honest with you on a professional level and we all wreck on a restart,” Preece said. “I don’t know what happened, but just a victim of circumstances. It sucks. I was racing around Aric, and we were just trying to be smart and get to the end of the race. Something like that, you’re not expecting everyone to wreck coming to the restart line. It’s unfortunate.”
Preece was scored 33rd, Almirola 35th.
“I took off on the restart and went from second to third gear and all of a sudden everybody in front of us just stopped,” Almirola said. “I think the leader was just playing games, trying to prevent the runs coming from behind and they stopped in the middle of the restart zone was right about where they should have been accelerating. It was just a huge accordion effect. We were back in 16th, so everybody just started stacking up and you can’t stop on a dime. It’s disappointing to get wrecked out of the race like that on a silly Mickey Mouse restart, but I should have known better.”
Bell, who was awarded the pole Saturday after qualifying was rained out, was scored 32nd.
“Yeah, just the same thing that everybody already said – you can’t see what’s going on,” Bell said. “You are just going off the guy in front of you and all of sudden he slows down and I got into him, and other guys got into me.”
Greg is the author of "The Nuts and Bolts of NASCAR: The Definitive Viewers' Guide to Big-Time Stock Car Auto Racing" and has been published in major publications across the country including the Los Angeles Times, the Cleveland Plain Dealer and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. He was also a contributor to Chicken Soup for the NASCAR Soul, published in 2010, and the Christmas edition in 2016. He wrote as the NASCAR, Formula 1, Auto Reviews and National Veterans Affairs Examiner for Examiner.com and has appeared on Fox News. He holds a BS degree in communications, a Masters degree in psychology and is currently a PhD candidate majoring in psychology. He is currently the weekend Motorsports Editor for Autoweek.
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