Late 13-car wreck claims all three RCR drivers – Nascar

Austin Dillon triggered a Texas-sized wreck during Saturday night’s rain-delayed Duck Commander 500 at Texas Motor Speedway after his No. 3 went spinning across the track at Lap 293 while running in the top 10.

Denny Hamlin‘s No. 11 Toyota got the No. 3 loose, causing the multi-car melee off Turn 2 that affected 13 cars total: Jimmie Johnson, Brian Vickers, Paul Menard, Michael Annett, Ricky Stenhouse Jr., Regan Smith, Ryan Newman, Clint Bowyer, Matt Kenseth, Trevor Bayne, Brian Scott and David Ragan.

The wreck was particularly unfortunate for Richard Childress Racing, as all three cars — Dillon, Menard and Newman — were caught up in the incident.

“We were on older tires and I was trying to get all I could there,” Dillon said. “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.”

The crash was also a bitter pill for Roush Fenway Racing, with Stenhouse’s solid run and Bayne’s gamble for a fuel-strategy win spoiled in the stack-up. Their teammate Greg Biffle was sidelined by another wreck just six laps before the multicar tangle, starting the streak of misfortune for the Jack Roush-owned team’s three-car effort.

“It looked like at first I thought he was gonna come down the track and then it looked like he was gonna stay up on the top,” Stenhouse said of his attempt to dodge Dillon’s spinning No. 3, which veered left into his path after contact with the outside wall on the backstretch. Stenhouse wound up 16th, the last driver on the lead lap. “I kind of committed to turning underneath thinking he was gonna stay at the top, then all of a sudden he came down and I got as much brake as I could and avoided him as much as I could. We just barely clipped him ever so slightly and it got us too much damage.”

In the wake of Dillon’s out-of-control car, several other drivers sustained significant damage. Among them was Vickers, making his fifth start of the season in the Stewart-Haas Racing No. 14 Chevrolet in place of the injured Tony Stewart.

“It was a long day,” said Vickers, who also endured a mid-race spin at the pit-road entrance. “That wreck just finally ended it for us. It’s unfortunate.”