The Southern 500 at the Darlington Raceway is one of the longest races on the Cup Series calendar. Like every other driver, Ryan Blaney and Martin Truex Jr., were warming their tires up in the initial laps to prepare for the intense battle that was up ahead on Sunday. Unfortunately, that’s as far as they got. The duo wrecked in just the second lap of the day and walked back to the pits.
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A mistake made by Truex Jr. when he was racing William Byron is what set things in motion. He overcorrected his steering going through a corner and got into the way of Blaney, who was racing behind him. Their cars hit the wall and suffered irreparable damage. The Joe Gibbs Racing driver was heard saying, “Idiot!”, on his radio in the immediate aftermath, for which he explained later.
He had referred to himself when he burst out in the car since he was aware that he’d just committed a dumb mistake. He told NBC Sports, “It was all my fault. All my doing. And, yeah. I got to run on the No. 24, went to the inside, thought everything was going fine, and the car just took off and I ran into him. So, obviously, that one’s on me.”
Fortunately, he was still able to qualify for the playoffs on points. Blaney had already secured his seat thanks to wins earlier in the year. Tensions might have been a lot higher had one of them been in a situation that demanded that they finish the race to qualify for the postseason. However, Truex Jr. did have some residual disappointment considering it was his final Southern 500 appearance.
Ryan Blaney provides health update following wreck
The defending champion expressed that he was feeling okay despite the hard crash he suffered. He said, “I was hurt for a little bit, but I think I’ll be OK. I’m alright. I saw Martin get loose, and I thought he was going to spin to the bottom, so I kind of gassed up to get around him, but it was just terrible timing. He overcorrected, and we were just right there.”
He continued to let out the frustration of his race ending so early and hoped for next weekend to go down better. The rest of the field continued with its effort and Chase Briscoe ended up as the winner. The 16-driver playoff field is now fully set.
The field will return to Atlanta for the first race of the postseason. The superspeedway-style track saw Daniel Suarez clinch victory on it earlier this year. The ten upcoming races will decide if Blaney can defend his title.
