FONTANA, Calif.: A jagged restart just before the halfway mark of Sunday’s Pala Casino 400 at Auto Club (Calif.) Speedway erased two of the pre-race favorites and ended the race for others.
On Lap 87, Joey Logano brought the field down to a slow restart and with many expecting to be at a faster pace, the field began stacking cars together with several cars slamming bumpers while others spun including Ty Dillon, Aric Almirola and Christopher Bell.
Bell along with pre-race favorite Tyler Reddick in his second NASCAR Cup Series race for 23XI Racing were eliminated for the event. In addition to Bell and Reddick, Almirola and Ryan Preece joined them in the garage and out of the second Cup Series race of the 2023 season.
Bell said he could not see ahead of him and was just a part of the accordion factor.
“Yeah, just the same thing that everybody already said – you can’t see what’s going on,” said a frustrated Bell after being evaluated and released from the infield care center.
“You are just going off the guy in front of you and all of sudden he slows down and I got into him, and other guys got into me.”
Reddick, who is off to a terrible start as the new driver of the No. 45 Monster Energy The Beast Unleashed Toyota Camry believed he was a victim of circumstances.
“I saw it stacked up pretty bad,” sounded Reddick. “I saw the car behind me kind of laid off to get a really big run, so I kind of elected to make the decision to go to the bottom and get around it. Unfortunately, I think Ryan (Blaney) had the same idea.
“We just got collected and went through the grass and the right front of The Beast Unleashed Toyota Camry TRD was broke. Unfortunate end to my Cup racing career at this two-mile track, but thankfully I’ve got one more shot later on with GearWrench and Sam Hunt Racing in the Xfinity car.”
In all nine cars were officially involved in the incident triggering one of the biggest Cup Series accidents on record in the event’s final 2.0-mile configuration.
Ryan Blaney, Dillon, Todd Gilliland, Justin Haley and Cody Ware were also listed as part of the casualties.
“I took off on the restart and went from second to third gear and all of a sudden everybody in front of us just stopped,” explained Almirola. “I think the leader was just playing games, trying to prevent the runs coming from behind and they stopped in the middle of the restart zone was right about where they should have been accelerating. It was just a huge accordion effect.
“We were back in 16th, so everybody just started stacking up and you can’t stop on a dime. It’s disappointing to get wrecked out of the race like that on a silly Mickey Mouse restart, but I should have known better.”
In a season where Preece feels he has less than half of a season to prove his worth as the driver of the No. 41 Stewart-Haas Racing Ford Mustang, two races in – Preece has suffered did not finishes after solid race performances.
“It’s kind of stupid, to be honest with you on a professional level and we all wreck on a restart,” sounded Preece. “I don’t know what happened, but just a victim of circumstances. It sucks. I was racing around Aric and we were just trying to be smart and get to the end of the race. Something like that, you’re not expecting everyone to wreck coming to the restart line. It’s unfortunate. That adjustment could have gotten us a lot better and we could have kept on making little gains.
“That was our goal, not to beat ourselves and just be there in the last 50 or 60. That’s why we stayed out that run, to see what our car would do in clean air and if we needed to work on it, which we did, and I felt like we just kept on making it better and better.
“It’s really a bad ending for this Haas Tooling Ford Mustang, and even Aric, so we just have to go to Vegas and be on offense and start digging out of this hole we’re in right now.”
Leader Logano reiterated that he did nothing wrong.
“Go back and look at the data. I didn’t do anything,” exclaimed Logano. “I just rolled it and went like everyone was anticipating it. It’s part of the new restart zone – it’s bigger. So, you can’t anticipate as much as you used to without getting into trouble.
“I went late in the zone because the car to the inside of me was laying back, so I was waiting for him to get up next to me before I went. I didn’t brake check anyone. It might look like it but you can go back and look at it and see it’s not there.”
Follow Chris Knight on Twitter @Knighter01 and email at: [email protected]
