RICHMOND, Va. – Matt Kenseth’s NASCAR playoff chances were placed in serious jeopardy in Saturday night’s Federated Auto Parts 400 after Richmond Raceway by a wayward ambulance.
Scoring his second Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series pole of the season, Kenseth looked to turn around what can be described as a frustrating season for the Joe Gibbs Racing driver with his first win of 2017 and a guaranteed placement into the post-season playoffs.
Then all hell broke loose.
Having a solid performance and running inside the top-five, Kenseth was wiped from competition after being caught up in a chain reaction accident of cars trying to access pit road under caution.
Danica Patrick spun after contact from Austin Dillon Lap 256 of 400 but did not hit the Turn 1 and was able to continue without incident. When NASCAR opened pit road, the cars that began diving down the entrance found a parked ambulance near the beginning of pit road.
Kenseth’s No. 20 Toyota Camry slammed into the rear of Clint Bowyer’s No. 14 Ford and damaged the radiator in his car. After evaluating the car on pit road, he was forced to the garage, eliminating him from the race.
The 2003 Cup champion had to wait until the end of Saturday night’s race to find out if he would be one of the 16-drivers fighting for the championship. After an exhilarating finish in NASCAR over time, Kenseth would earn the final spot into the playoffs based on his points position.
“Well, we were all just kind of coming to pit road and I saw an ambulance sitting there and so I looked left of the ambulance at the same time (Jason) Hedlesky (his spotter) yelled at everyone to stop there was an ambulance just sitting there.,” Kenseth said.
“It was an accordion effect and I just couldn’t get stopped. Not really sure why pit road was open with an ambulance parked there, but everybody stopped and I didn’t see it in time and ran into the car in front of me.”
Kenseth said if NASCAR had sent safety vehicles onto the track, they should not have opened pit road to cars until they were cleared of the area.
“It’s a very narrow entry. Pit road speed is pretty fast – 45 miles an hour or something – and, you know, still I shouldn’t have hit the car in front of me, but I can’t say I was expecting to see an ambulance blocking me,” he said.
“By the time I looked up and saw him parked there and they were stopping in front of me, I tried the best I could to stop and couldn’t.”
Following the race, Scott Miller, NASCAR’s senior vice president of competition spoke about the situation but offered little insight on why or how the incident happened.
“We had a situation where a directive was given from the tower and it wasn’t followed,” he said. “We’ll do our due diligence to figure out why the directive wasn’t followed, make sure that we’re prepared never to make that mistake again.”
Miller also said that Kenseth’s major damage was a determining factor on why the sanctioning body chose not to wave the five-minute repair clock, while other drivers weren’t penalized for a commitment line violation because of the parked safety vehicle.
“I mean, that was a major repair,” Miller added. “Would have had to change the radiator. That was one of those things, that’s the call that we made.
“I don’t think it would have really changed his day any because it would have probably taken 15 or 20 laps to change the radiator. At the end of the day, we didn’t make that call, but I don’t feel like it really changed the outcome of their day much either for us not making that call.”
Follow Chris Knight on Twitter @Knighter01.
