Carl Long hits weight dropped from another car in practice
Friday's opening NASCAR XFINITY Series practice at Dover International Speedway came to an end under yellow conditions when the No. 13 Dodge of Carl Long hit the outside wall before sliding back down and hitting the inside wall.
Before climbing from the wrecked race car, Long told the team he hit a piece of weight that fell off another car.
"It hit me," he said. "Knocked me straight in the damn fence."
At the conclusion of the practice session, FOX Sports 1 analyst Kenny Wallace reported that NASCAR indicated the weight came from the No. 97 Chevrolet of Peyton Sellers.
This marks the second time in three weeks that a piece of weight has come loose from a NASCAR XFINITY Series car and struck another vehicle.
While practicing at Iowa Speedway two weeks ago, Jamie Dick's car hit a 35-pound piece of tungsten with the hood and windshield of his car. The weight punctured the windshield, struck Dick's helmet visor and damage the roll bar behind him.
The piece of tungsten that struck Dick's car came from Ross Chastain's car, and the team's crew chief Gary Cogswell was fined $15,000 for the incident.
During the Coca-Cola 600 weekend at Charlotte Motor Speedway, many drivers expressed their concerns over weights falling out of cars while on track.
"I believe the penalty needs to be large to the team that leaves something loose and lets a weight like that come out," Team Penske's Joey Logano said. "That's very, very dangerous. That's more dangerous than hitting any wall and that's something we can't look over, for sure."
After Friday's incident at Dover, XFINITY Series regular Regan Smith took to his Twitter account to express his displeasure over another incident of loose weight hitting another car.
Catchfence.com's Chris Knight tweeted out the following statement from Victor Obaika, team owner of Sellers' No. 97 Chevrolet:
"I don't know whether to say its serendipity, especially because this has just happened a few weeks ago, so everybody should be sensitive about it. Unfortunately, it did happened and we definitely take it very seriously. We will be unfortunately also having to take some internal introspection to ensure it does not happen again and more than that just to ensure that we can show that we take it seriously, more than just words.
"We have spoken to Carl (Long) and we've offered him whatever we can. (Our) backup car, our people, whatever he needs, you know because it's unfortunate, but we have to show some responsibility on our part and we've done that and we'll help however we can. In terms of our weekend, we need to finish the race, but there will be some hard words at the end of the day, because the fact that it's happened can't be overlooked or wished away. It happened.”
