The 2024 YellaWood 500 was an eventful affair with the biggest wreck in NASCAR history and a thrilling overtime finish. The crash that played out with five laps to go in the race schedule collected a whopping 28 cars and eight of them were being piloted by playoff drivers. One of the drivers behind the incident was Brad Keselowski. Now, it would be unfair to pin all the blame on the RFK Racing co-owner, but here’s a breakdown of the substantial part he played in it.
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Team Penske driver Austin Cindric was in the lead before the chaos, and he appeared to be well on his way to the checkered flag. However, none could have predicted what was coming. With the field pushing and shoving the back of each other’s cars, as is usual in superspeedways, a big wreck was just waiting to happen. This was when Joey Logano pushed Keselowski and sent him into the back of Cindric a tad bit too hard. The contact spun the No. 2 driver and set off a chain reaction.
Keselowski later told the press, “When we had to pass the [No.] 38 car in (Turns) 1 and 2, it stretched the whole bottom lane out. The bottom had to move to the middle, the middle had to move to the top, and it just broke everybody up. It was a giant rubber band and the rubber band snapped back.”
With just one more race left in the Round of 12, the drivers who were caught in the wreck find themselves in precarious positions. The Charlotte Roval will see them scrapping for positions just like they did in Talladega. Cindric and his teammates, in particular, will want to prove their caliber next weekend.
Cindric’s teammate, Joey Logano, refuses to play the blame game
Logano was the reason behind Keselowski getting into Cindric. In fairness, he himself was pushed from behind and had no control over the lunge of his car. The two-time champion was in complete understanding that no single driver could be blamed for what transpired and that it was just the way racing played out in tracks in Talladega.
He said in his post-race interview, “The No. 2 got out there a little bit more than what he has been. The No. 21 gave me a shove and I transferred that to the No. 6 … You can’t see what’s in front of you from there. He got to the No. 2 with a fair amount of steam there. It’s nobody’s fault … It’s not Brad’s fault, it’s not anybody’s fault. It’s just the product of the racing we got.”
The No. 22 driver is currently 13 points below the Round of 8 cutline and will need to have a strong performance at the Roval next weekend to make it through. It will be interesting to see how he approaches the tricky road course race.
