NASCAR Cup Charlotte

Restart crash eliminates several contenders in Coke 600

Several cars were collected in a restart crash just shy of halfway in Sunday's Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte Motor Speedway.

Nick DeGroot

Edited: May 30, 2022, 5:28 AM

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The incident occurred on Lap 192 when Ryan Blaney lost control after contact with the apron in Turn 1. He spun backwards into the field, collecting several cars.

Denny Hamlin, Kurt Busch, Bubba Wallace, Brad Keselowski, William Byron, and Noah Gragson were just some of the drivers caught up in the carnage.

Byron, Blaney, Keselowski, Busch, and Wallace were unable to continue.

"It's chaos out there"

"I thought we were in the catbird seat there," said Byron. "We were the first guy on new tires. We were going to cycle out really well there and then they just start wrecking on the bottom and cleaned out those of us on the top. Just sucks. It's chaos out there. You can't drive the car. Any slight bit sideways is wrecked. So somebody gets a little bit sideways and we all wreck. It either takes out other people or they spin to the infield. Just chaos."

Blaney explained what happened after being released from the infield care center. “I was tucked up tight behind the 8 (Reddick) and he was kind of lower than I thought on the frontstretch and kind of ran through through the turf, and then got to (Turn 1) and jerked right. Thinking he was going to hit the apron, I didn’t have time to kind of get right and I just kind of hit the apron and it got me loose. I hate that other cars got tore up.

Blaney added: "Spatially, I just didn't really know where I was at and make a mistake."

Both 23XI Racing Toyotas, which were very strong in the early portions of the race, were eliminated in the incident.

“We had a winning top-five Monster Energy Toyota Camry TRD, we did," said Busch. "Just was hoping we would have enough tires to get to the end and the sequences that everyone was on. Billy Scott’s (crew chief) a great leader. We’ve wrecked a lot of cars this year and we were just wrong place, wrong time this year. Bubba (Wallace) was in front of me and tried not to hit him. I think I hit about 15 different things. And I tried to crank it up and was like, ‘Nah, she’s done.’ This is a rough situational event. Fast car and I’m really proud of my guys. I’ll be at the shop on Tuesday helping them tear it down.”

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