DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – Taking some blame for a Lap 54 accident that collected more than 20 cars and eliminated seven of them out of the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series Coke Zero Sugar 400 at Daytona International Speedway.
The crash occurred when Hendrick Motorsports rookie William Byron, the leader attempted to block Keselowski, who lifted and then got hit from behind by Ricky Stenhouse Jr.
Ryan Blaney, Kurt Busch, polesitter Chase Elliott, Denny Hamlin, Keselowski, Joey Logano and Daniel Suarez were unable to continue.
After being evaluated and released from the infield care center, Keselowski showed his frustration for the early-race tango.
“Ricky was doing the best he could to give me a good push and had a great run to take the lead and the car in front of me just threw a late, bad block,” said Keselowski. “I made the mistake of lifting instead of just driving through him and that’s my fault.”
Drivers blocking throughout a restrictor-plate race has become a common theme as drivers attempt to keep their position.
“It was a bad block,” Keselowski said. “There’s times you can make a block; there’s time you can’t.
“I know better than that. I’ve got to wreck more people and then they’ll stop blocking me late and behind like that.
“That’s my fault. I’ll take the credit for my team and we’ll go to Talladega and we’ll wreck everybody that throws a bad block like that.”
Despite having a fast No. 41 Stewart-Haas Racing Ford Fusion, Kurt Busch insisted there was no safe spot on the track.
“I was running in the high lane and I just have to giggle, there’s no safe spot,” offered Busch. “I thought being in the top two or three is pretty safe, but we just got clipped from behind. Usually, there’s that danger zone that everybody knows about from third to 12th and we didn’t get strung out enough to get away from some of the action.
“It’s a bummer night for Monster Energy Ford. It was fast. We put her on the bottom at the end of stage one to gain some points, but now we’ve got nothing. We were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
Byron’s night didn’t fair much better, however, as 11 laps later he was knocked out of contention after Stenhouse Jr. hit Kyle Busch who wiped out Byron who was in control of the race.
Follow Chris Knight on Twitter @Knighter01.
