Photo Credit: Noel Lanier
While Hendrick Motorsports was fast throughout the weekend leading up to Speedweeks and led early in the race, they would not challenge for the victory throughout the event as it’d be Joe Gibbs Racing dominating the show for three-quarters of the day.
Unfortunately for HMS, two of their heavy hitters fell out of the race due to a pair of separate incidents.
After starting the race from the pole and leading the opening three laps, Chase Elliott would fall back through the field to run mid-field. While in the midst of a pack in the middle of three-wide, Elliott would get loose and go sliding off of the racing surface. He would then slide across the asphalt, before hitting the grass and ripping the front nose off of his No. 24 NAPA Auto Parts Chevrolet.
“Just got in middle there a couple of laps before and got loose off of (turn) four and just lost it,” he said. “I hate it-it had been such a fun week and you hate to end the race before it even got started. Just disappointed for everybody. We will just have to look past it and get on for Atlanta. That is the most important thing now. Can’t get caught up in what happened today, it is irrelevant now. We’ll try and get it fixed and make some laps. Then it’s on to Atlanta and if we can make some laps we will and move forward from here.”
Meanwhile, Dale Earnhardt Jr. ran up front through much of the beginning portion of the race, before falling back through the draft. He was working at making his way back to the front when he’d get loose while trying to side draft off of Austin Dillon, sliding across the asphalt and making contact with the inside wall.
“I got loose and just busted my tail,” he said. “It was time to go. We were making some moves on the outside and moving forward and passing some guys. Just got loose trying to do too much at once.”
Earnhardt and Elliott weren’t the only drivers to get loose off of turn four, as evident by Kevin Harvick sliding sideways and making a big save at one point. Earnhardt says the issues off the corner can be contributed to the wind direction as it makes the cars tight.
“It’s like this every week at every race track,” he explained. “If the winds blowing one way, the car is going to handle one way at one end of the track and handle a different way at the other end. We were really tight. The wind was in the door all the way through Turn 4 and we were freeing the car up real big. I just got it out of shape there and lost it.”
Driving his favourite car and having finished top-three in each of last year’s four restrictor plate events, his plan was to originally stick up near the front of the field, though battling handling issues resulted in him falling back further than warranted.
“The balance of the car was a big curve ball today,” he said. “We really didn’t anticipate the balance being that big of a deal. You saw us struggling all day long trying to fix the handle of the car. We were just pushing real bad. Just couldn’t pass, couldn’t be on offense. We started getting it a little bit better there, but just got it too loose.”
