Tony Stewart and Kevin Harvick initially appeared to be the lucky ones, driving their cars away from the chaos on the backstretch and into the garage area, both making the left-hand turn into their stalls as crews awaited with equipment.
The Nos. 20 and 29 teams, stabled side-by-side, immediately went to work on their totaled machines that seemingly had identical damage: smashed-in nose, bent-up hood, broken deck lid, countless spots of interior malfunctions.
Stewart and Harvick got the brunt of a Lap 17 incident during Sunday’s Best Buy 400 at Dover International Speedway that spawned after Elliott Sadler came down on David Gilliland and bounced off the wall and back into traffic. Stewart T-boned Sadler as he sat in the middle of the concrete straightaway.
“I take 100 percent responsibility—it’s my fault for being anywhere close to Elliott [Sadler],” a frustrated Stewart said as his crew was forced to stop work when the red flag was displayed so officials could clean up the wreckage and spilt fluids. “If I’m within half a lap of him, I expect that to happen. It’s my fault—I’m the one that hit him. When I hit him it caused all the guys behind us to wreck, so it’s my fault.”
The crash also collected Denny Hamlin when he slammed his No. 11 Toyota into Sadler just before Harvick pinned Hamlin’s car. Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Scott Riggs suffered major damage, as well. Clint Bowyer, Bobby Labonte, Paul Menard, Kasey Kahne and Bill Elliott also got collected in some fashion.
“The wreck happened in front of us and we had actually stopped on the track because it was blocked and got hit in the rear by another car,” Harvick said.
“When I heard wreck off Turn 2, I immediately was on the brakes,” Hamlin said as his car was pulled into the garage on a wrecker hook just before the red flag was displayed. “It’s just these cars don’t stop as well as they had in the past. It’s just part of the racetrack. It’s tough racing early in the going.”
“I can’t really says it’s anybody’s fault right there,” Hamlin said. “It’s just tough racing.”
Elliott Sadler was turned into the wall and went spinning down the concrete track after he made contact with David Gilliland. There was no where for the other cars to go.
“We just tried to survive,” Kahne said. “It’s very tough to go fast when these cars are perfect and impossible if you have any type of damage to them.”
The race was red flagged on lap 22. The Monster Mile became a Monster Mess.
“It was just a complete road block,” Hamlin said. “I had to just choose who I was going to hit.”
Stewart got the No. 20 Toyota back on the track 113 laps later and finished 41st. Harvick also returned- without the hood and the set up entirely out of whack- and finished 34th.
“When I hit him, it caused all the guys behind me to wreck,” he said.
This was the second straight race Stewart was the victim of bad luck. He had victory in sight in the Coca-Cola 600 until a flat tire with three laps left cost him his shot at the victory.
“Unfortunately, adversity is our motto here at Joe Gibbs Racing,” Stewart said.
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