By Luis Torres, Staff Writer/Photographer
Chaos unfolded on a Lap 83 restart that ended a few drivers’ afternoons in Sunday’s FireKeepers Casino 400 at Michigan International Speedway.
Chase Elliott led the field to the restart and got a tremendous push by Tyler Reddick. Suddenly, a bad accordion effect resulted in Reddick’s afternoon coming to an end.
Elliott’s Hendrick Motorsports teammate Kyle Larson didn’t get going which set back Riley Herbst and John Hunter Nemechek.
Then comes Carson Hocevar, who was inside the fourth row.
Larson’s slow restart bunched up the inside row and with minimal time to react, Hocevar ran into the back bumper of Nemechek and all hell broke loose.
The contact by Hocevar sent Nemechek up to path of 23XI Racing teammates Riley Herbst and Bubba Wallace. That’s where the race fell apart for many of Hocevar’s adversaries.
Nemechek spun back to the path of Hocevar while Wallace ran into Ty Gibbs, who would then clip Reddick. Gibbs lost control and made wall contact before colliding with Joey Logano, causing front damage that ruined his afternoon.
Reddick tried saving his car but would dart back to the racing surface after hitting the inside wall, destroying the right rear. The wall impact sent him onto the path of Austin Dillon, who took the worst brunt of the crash which nearly collected Logano and Austin Cindric.
Also involved was eventual race winner Denny Hamlin, who lost control after bumper contact from Daniel Suarez, but nobody ran into the back of him and he continued his race.
Through the smoke and carnage, the nine-car pileup only saw Dillon and Reddick’s days end prematurely with the latter getting his first DNF all season.
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Reddick, who has finished each of the first 14 races with 11 of those being top-10 finishes, brought his car to pit road to assess the damage and then went to the garage.
From there, he went to the infield care center where he was checked and released but did had some coughs after the wreck.
“It was a bit smokey in there,” Reddick explained his coughing. I got quite a bit of stuff on the left side that got punctured and knocked around. Hot exhaust that was burning some stuff up. I’m alright. Just a bummer for our Rockstar Energy Toyota Camry.”
The NASCAR Cup Series championship leader explained that his exit from the 200-lap race has its detriments. Not because he felt his No. 45 Toyota had the speed to go for a sixth win of the season, but a poor result will affect next weekend’s efforts at Pocono Raceway (Sunday at 3:00 p.m. ET on Prime Video), especially having to qualify early due to the metric scores determining the order.
“I felt like we really had good speed. We were set up to get a good restart and get second there. Probably up front and lead some more laps. Just all-around bummer,” Reddick commented.
“I wanted to have a really good points day. We really had good speed yesterday and it showed again today. I felt like a race we could’ve won and it got away from us.
“All year long, we’ve done a really good job of staying out of messes like this. Unfortunate that it finally happen. At least we got a couple of stage points. Just not the day you want to have, but we’ll have to grind it out (for Pocono).”
Hocevar continued his race and ended up finishing fourth to race winner Hamlin, but the ire of his actions continue to loom large from his peers.
During the Lap 150 red flag for a crash involving Christopher Bell and Chase Elliott, Hocevar told Prime Video analyst Dale Earnhardt, Jr. about the ordeal which he had already put behind him.
“I don’t really remembered what happened other than just a stack up,” Hocevar commented.
Dillon was frustrated about his day ending after his No. 3 Chevrolet showed tremendous speed and has little regard for Hocevar that’ll last awhile.
“It’s super unfortunate. I’ve only seen one replay, but what I saw, it look like (Hocevar) got into (Nemechek) and turned him. I hope at some point, (Hocevar) figures it out. I’m not going to show anything to him for a long time,” Dillon explained.
“I’m mad because we had a fast race car. That’s what truly sucks. We almost got through it and I saw (Hamlin) coming down. I kind of gassed it to get by (Hamlin), but (Reddick) was there. So, it was unfortunate.”
The resentment for Hocevar goes beyond Dillon. It’s spread to the No. 3 Richard Childress Racing organization.
Over the radio, both Dillon’s spotter Brandon Benesch and car owner Richard Childress were anything but pleased with Hocevar’s latest antics.
“(Hocevar) as usual is what causes these things,” said Benesch.
“Any time their eyes are that close together, it means they’ve got a small brain,” said Childress.
During the Prime post-race show, Hocevar saw the replay of the wreckage and sensed the accordion effect which caught him off-guard.
“I turned left. I was probably going to go three-wide and it kind of caught me off guard and shocked it spun (Nemechek) left,” said Hocevar. “My evasiveness probably wrecked him and everybody there. If I just kept the wheel straight, we’d be fine but they were checking up more based off on what I saw and turned left.”
Hocevar felt bad about causing the chaos and had no ill-will on taking out his competitors. Something he hopes he can clean up going forward.
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