Rookies Chase Elliott, Ryan Blaney take each other out at Kentucky
Rookies Ryan Blaney and Chase Elliott were the latest to crash in the demolition derby that the Quaker State 400 at Kentucky Speedway has become.
On a Lap 88, just after a restart, Blaney’s Wood Brothers Racing Ford got stuck in the middle between Elliott on the top and Greg Biffle on the bottom.
As they headed down the backstretch it was hard to tell whether Elliott came down on Blaney or Blaney drifted up into Elliott. Whatever the cause, the two made contact and both cars went hard into the Turn 3 wall.
“It’s so hard to get into that corner all night with a car close to behind you and outside of you, and no one lifting either,” said Blaney. “And it’s just an unfortunate spot we got put in and I hate to see two really good cars tore up.”
“I guess Ryan just got loose and got us, but that is racing,” said Elliott. “The good news is we had another fast car, the bad news that is the third bad week in a row. We will try to regroup and go get ‘em wherever we go next.”
And after that crash, there was another bad wreck on the next restart on Lap 93, which involved nine cars, including Chris Buescher Brian Scott and AJ Allmendinger.
“Everybody keeps begging for less and less downforce, and we keep seeing more and more incidents because of I,” said Buescher. “I think it has made better racing at a lot of race tracks, but it’s not easy to get into turn three here side-by-side.”
“It doesn’t really matter what downforce package you have when you’ve got two cars really tight on you from behind and on the side,” said Scott. “You just have no air on your car and there was nothing I could do.”
