FORTH WORTH — In what could be considered the first major wreck of the 2016 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series season, a relatively incident free race at Texas Motor Speedway erupted into a 13-car pileup in the late stages of Saturday night’s Duck Commander 500.
Austin Dillon who elected not to pit during the prior caution lost control of his No. 3 Richard Childress Racing Chevrolet on Lap 294 of 334, sending his car up the track into the path of six-time Cup Series champion Jimmie Johnson.
“I haven’t seen (the replay) yet,” said Dillon. “We were on older tires and I was trying to get all I could there. It’s part of trying to win a race. We put ourselves in a position to be out front, thinking that two laps wouldn’t mean much, but it did. That’s part of it. The good Lord kept me safe tonight and gave me a good race car. You have to be gracious in defeat. We’ll come back next week with another fast car and hopefully, we can do the same thing we did today, and that’s run up front.”
Johnson made slight contact with Dillon from behind, sending Dillon’s car into the wall and then back down the track, where it collected 12 additional cars.
When the smoke cleared, serious damage was done to Dillon’s teammates of Paul Menard and Ryan Newman, while Brian Vickers and Ricky Stenhouse Jr. also received significant damage in the carnage.
Michael Annett, Trevor Bayne, Clint Bowyer, Johnson, Matt Kenseth, David Ragan, Brian Scott and Regan Smith also received some damage of various levels in the crash.
While making repeated trip to pit road for repairs, NASCAR first penalized the 26-year-old for speeding, then decided to hold him a lap for doing so repeatedly in an attempt to stay on the lead lap. Dillon would return to the track and finish 19th, two laps down.
“It tore up a bunch of race cars,” added Dillon. “We had a good car. I just wish we could re-do it. But heck, we’re learning. We had another fast race car. We’ll go on from here. I don’t know why they put us a lap down for a speeding penalty. Usually, a speeding penalty is like the tail end of the longest line. So, that lost us some more spots there at the end. But, we’ll take it and go home.”
Dillon’s finish dropped him three positions in the standings to 10th entering next weekend’s race at Bristol (Tenn.) Motor Speedway on Apr. 17.
Follow Chris Knight on Twitter @Knighter01.
