On an already hot day in Texas, things got a bit warmer during the NASCAR Cup race at Texas Motor Speedway Sunday.
Shortly after a restart to start the third and final Stage on Lap 218 of 334, race leader Ryan Blaney got loose racing through Turn 4, causing the field behind him to stack up. As drivers shuffled for position three-wide through the tri-oval, Aric Almirola clipped Kyle Busch, causing Busch to slide into the rear of Joe Gibbs Racing teammate Martin Truex Jr.
Truex’s No. 19 Toyota slammed into the outside wall on the frontstretch while Busch flew though the infield grass to save his No. 18 Toyota. Busch was able to recover and amazingly finished fourth.
The crash collected 12 cars in total, including Kevin Harvick, Chris Buescher, William Byron, Kurt Busch, Cole Custer, Matt Kenseth, Ryan Preece, Ricky Stenhouse Jr. and Bubba Wallace.
NASCAR was forced to throw a red flag for just over 11 minutes.
Custer was among those who didn’t finish.
“We just kind of got caught up in it,” Custer who won his first Cup race last week at Kentucky said. “They started wrecking in the front. I couldn’t really see what happened. I was on the brakes as hard as I could but couldn’t miss it. I feel bad. I mean, I feel like we were getting ahold of our HaasTooling.com Mustang. We fired off the race pretty decent and we were just trying to keep up with the track there at the end and I think we got it pretty decent. We just didn’t really get to show anything for it.”
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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