For Kaulig Racing’s Cup Series debutant Derek Kraus, the Shriner’s Children’s 500 wasn’t a smooth ride at all. The young driver straight out of driving trucks, felt like the handling of the Cup cars was really difficult. The main reason why he said that was because of how hard it is to pass these days with the Next-Gen stock cars.
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When asked how hard it was for him to make his way through the traffic, the #16 driver said, “I’d say 10-15 times worse than anything I’ve ever driven, it’s pretty frustrating. Because you just catch people and you can’t pass. You can be a lot faster than somebody, catch them and you can’t pass. I thought trucks are bad but these are pretty bad at traffic.”
"I'd say it's 10-15 times worse than anything I've ever driven. I thought trucks were bad, but these are pretty bad in traffic." @derek9kraus criticizes the handling of the car after crashing out in his second career #NASCAR Cup Series start at Phoenix.
📹: @TheBryanNolen pic.twitter.com/XKi2Jze204
— Frontstretch (@Frontstretch) March 10, 2024
However, he did admit that people are still winning races with these cars. So that means, he needs to get better at his game and learn to pass when every car in the field is equally matched. Unfortunately, his day ended with a P35 finish and a DNF, owing to the crash that happened right in the opening laps of the race.
Kraus was clueless about how his car got loose
Kraus was in the middle of a big pack on lap 6 when he was about to make a turn. However, his Chevy got loose right at that moment, and turned, catching Austin Dillon in the mess. “To be honest it happened so fast that I don’t even know,” recalled Kraus.
“I ran below the apron like you would with a truck or an Xfinity car, as soon as I got the left-front below it, it literally just spun around. I’m sure it looks really bad on TV but it’s part of learning,” he laughed, a little embarrassed.
“I was in (a) big pack. I saw the 22 (Joey Logano) go around, just kinda had nowhere to go. I got hit from behind and kinda pushed me into it. Felt like we were okay, pretty tight; think that we had a little bit of damage from I lost it off of (turn) 2,” he added.
Luckily, Austin Cindric was able to avoid the crash and advance further in the race. Sadly for Richard Childress Racing, Dillon didn’t have enough time to stomp on his brakes or enough vision to even dodge the ensuing crash due to the smoke generated by the tires of Kraus’ ride.
