Penske cars crash in the early laps at Bristol
After rain soaked Bristol Motor Speedway for most of Sunday morning, NASCAR took advantage of a brief respite from the wet conditions to start the Food City 500 as soon as it could.
And the hustle to start the race did not work out well for the two Team Penske cars of Brad Keselowski and Joey Logano.
Keselowski was running third and attempting to lap a car when the back end of his car snapped around off a corner. He tried to save it, but as he did, Logano (running fourth) got into the gas and into Keselowski and the two hit the inside wall.
Not long after the crash, which happened on lap 19, it started to rain again and the race was red-flagged after 22 of a scheduled 500 laps (Bristol laps take approximately 15 seconds to complete, so you can do the math as to how long the stint lasted).
Both cars sustained heavy damage and Logano took his car directly behind the wall.
Outside of the context of the crashed Penske cars, it’s fair to ask what the point of starting the race was. NASCAR officials knew very well that rain, part of a massive storm system forecasted to hit Bristol Motor Speedway for the entire week leading up to the race, was coming again. And arriving very, very soon.
When NASCAR made the decision to start the race, some drivers were still scrambling to their cars. While the efforts of the Air Titan track drying system don’t go unnoticed – the track was dry sooner than it could have been with older drying technology – it seemed like an incredibly futile attempt to get the race started. Heck, it almost felt like an exercise in showing off the ability to get the race started amidst the dreary forecast rather than a genuine attempt to get 500 laps of racing completed on Sunday.
Will the race start again on Sunday? It depends on the rain, of course. And whenever it does, it’ll restart with two battered Penske cars.
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Nick Bromberg is the editor of From The Marbles on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter!
