Kenseth sent into wall, Bristol repeat bid derailed – Nascar

Defending race-winner Matt Kenseth didn’t repeat after going behind the wall to fix damage incurred on Lap 327 of Sunday’s Food City 500 at Bristol Motor Speedway.

The Joe Gibbs Racing driver had rebounded from an early race brush with the wall after a right front tire went down to get back into the top three, but a similar issue cropped up with a little less than 200 laps to go to send the No. 20 car hard into the outside wall, where it sustained significant damage.

“We just keep blowing right front tires, I don’t know why,” Kenseth told FOX after the second incident.

“The first one was a little confusing, I knew I blew a right front, but I thought they were telling me it wasn’t flat so I was a little confused. This one just blew a lot earlier and the angle was a lot worse hitting the wall. We really weren’t very tight, our Dollar General Camry was pretty fast today. I was encouraged again today even though we don’t have the result.”

Goodyear will be taking the tires that had issues from the JGR teams of Kenseth, Kyle Busch and Denny Hamlin for further analysis. All three drivers had tires go down on them during the race. Despite his teammates’ struggles, Carl Edwards led 276 laps and won the race at Bristol.

Kenseth returned to the track at Lap 363. He was scored in 35th position and was 36 laps down at time, despite having led 142 laps on the day.

The 2003 champion finished in 36th place.