The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Logano-Elliott crash: NASCAR drivers keep wrecking, getting mad at each other
History repeated itself in more ways than one Sunday at “The Last Great Colosseum.” Drivers who have typically struggled or crashed out at Bristol Motor Speedway’s unforgiving, half-mile track — Alex Bowman, Matt DiBenedetto, Ricky Stenhouse Jr. — did.
And just like last weekend, Chase Elliott was minutes away from a top finish before a late-lap incident took him out of the running, and sent Brad Keselowski sailing past him to the finish line in first place.
“I watched Joey (Logano) and Chase (Elliott) going at it,” Keselowski said after the race. “The next thing I knew, they were wrecking. Here we found ourselves in Victory Lane. Just really crazy how it all came together.”
The two 2020 race-winning Cup drivers battled side-by-side in the final laps of the race before Elliott said he got loose running on the inside of Logano, sending him into the wall and forcing them both to the bottom half of the finishing order. After the race, Logano said he approached Elliott’s car after waiting for an apology.
“I sat there for a minute, minute-and-a-half. Nothing,” Logano said in a video posted to his Instagram account. “So I just get mad enough to go up to (Elliott) and talk to him, and what I get out of it was, ‘You’ve done it before.’ ”
“It’s hard racing at the end,” Logano told FOX Sports earlier in the evening after he had a conversation with the No. 9 driver. “I get that, but golly, man, be a man and take the hit when you’re done with it.”
Elliott told FOX Sports during his post-race interview that he’ll “certainly take the blame.”
“Just going for the win, you know,” Elliott said. “Trying to get a run underneath him and (I) got really loose. I don’t know if I had a tire going down or if I just got loose on entry, but as soon as I turned off the wall, I had zero chance in making it.”
“I feel like I had to keep him right there in order to win the race with only three or four laps to go,” Elliott continued. “So I hate that we both wrecked, but you can’t go back in time now.”
Instances of wrecking and post-wreck confrontations from the race leaders seem to be coming more frequently. Two weeks ago, Busch apologized to Elliott for a move that caused Elliott to crash out of the race, to which Elliott initially responded to by raising a middle finger to Busch. It was tough to tell at first if the spin was intentional or accidental, but Busch took the blame for it after the race, as did Elliott for the latest misstep Sunday.
“For whatever reason, whether it’s not having a chance to work on the cars, practice, the drivers not getting those experiences, we’re seeing more mistakes with this format, this style of racing, the no-practice-type stuff,” Keselowski said.
Keselowski added that he doesn’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing in terms of the on-track product.
“I think that makes for better racing in a lot of different ways,” Keselowski said. “So I hope we keep it up.”
The two-time 2020 race winner advocated for the format of NASCAR’s return races, which includes no practice or qualifying laps at the track prior to the green flag during COVID-19.
“We’ve seen some of the best racing we’ve ever seen in NASCAR accordingly,” Keselowski said. “I’m not just saying that because I’m in Victory Lane. I think a lot of people would say this was a tremendous race, and I hope they enjoyed it.”
Seven-time Cup champion Jimmie Johnson, who finished in third place at Bristol, did not directly connect the recent wrecks by top drivers to a lack of practice.
“I just think we do a nice job of making it look easy,” Johnson said. “When you cross the line, stuff goes wrong.”
“We walk that tightrope day in and day out,” the No. 48 driver continued. “100% is really all the car can take. You step over it and create situations that take you out if you try too hard.”
Johnson joked that the drivers’ “true colors” are finally showing with all the wrecks and that they fooled everyone by making it look easy to race without crashing.
Drivers’ “true colors” might be coming out off the track, too. Keselowski said that drivers have been stuck at home for so long, and are now taking their aggression out on each other.
“Early on in the race, everybody was hitting each other,” Keselowski said. “It carried in all the way to the end. Some people ran me over. I probably ran some people over.”
It probably won’t be the last time we see a confrontation between drivers. More drama could easily ensue on Sunday.
“Everybody is mad at everybody going into Atlanta next week,” Keselowski said.