It landed on the track upside down, minus the engine, and was hit by a spinning Brad Keselowski. Dillon suffered only minor injuries, and the other drivers caught up in the terrifying crash walked away without a scratch. “I was pushing the 24 [of Jeff Gordon], the people behind me was pushing – it was just a wad right there at the end”, said Dillon, who had just crossed the finish line in seventh before the crash. The frightening outcome developed just after Richard Petty Motorsports driver Sam Hornish Jr. spun through the grass to bring out the race’s final caution setting up a green-white-checker finish. I saw everything in the mirror pretty clearly …
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“I’m always concerned when there’s a wreck”. “I am not sure what else we can really do about it. They are freak incidents that happen”. “I had to run real hard to win this race here”, he said. “For me even after wrecking like that, I got to experience one of the greatest things in winning there the night before that, and it’s a part of it, and I still had a good finish on Sunday“.
Joie Chitwood III, president at Daytona, said the crash will serve as a lesson to track engineers so the raceway can be made safer for future races.
One person had to be taken to the hospital. The other four were treated at the infield care center.
“I’m definitely open-minded to it and hope that we can engineer something, but I don’t know how you keep a 3500-pound vehicle at 200 miles an hour staying in the racetrack like that”, he said.
Such was the ferocity of the impact that Dillon’s vehicle was totally destroyed – yet extraordinarily, the driver was able to get out of the vehicle immediately and give a cheer and thumbs-up to the crowd. Weve got to figure this out. I think our speeds are too high. “I think that needs to be one of the next biggest pushes that we can all have”. “That’s the next thing”. The front of the field was running in a tight pack of cars. I didn’t even know who it is, but you just don’t want to see anybody get hurt. But the sight of Dillon’s auto going airborne and hitting the fence still had left him shaken.
“I am just going to be really sore, ” Dillon told NASCAR.com. Some 30 hours later, he endured a horrific airborne crash just after the checkered flag waved over race victor Dale Earnhardt Jr. Saturday’s qualifying was called off because of the weather, with Earnhardt awarded the pole after having Friday’s fastest practice time.
Newman went on to reference how this bad crash happened at the same track that took the life of Dale Earnhardt Sr.in 2001 and that similar accidents are still occurring.
“I was near tears”, he said.
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Hamlin finished third, followed by Kevin Harvick and Kurt Busch.
