Clint Bowyer and Jeff Gordon make contact in garage during practice
Wrecking on the way out to practice is one more incident away from becoming a trend in the Sprint Cup Series.
A week after Cole Whitt and Sam Hornish Jr. made contact on the way out to the track at Kentucky, Clint Bowyer and Jeff Gordon ran into each other in the New Hampshire garage on Saturday morning.
Cup garages aren’t exactly wide open spaces, especially at a track like NHMS that’s only a mile long. Bowyer was heading out to the track and Gordon was backing out of his garage stall, just like you’d back out of your driveway into your street.
So in this instance, Bowyer is the car coming down the street. And one of Gordon’s crew members his rear-view mirror. The crew member was waving Gordon out and the four-time champion kept backing out. As Bowyer kept going towards the track.
Neither driver stopped in time and the right front of Bowyer’s car smashed into the right rear of Gordon’s.
While Bowyer was able to get back on the track for practice, Gordon’s team spent the rest of the session fixing the right rear and preparing it for final practice.
The incident brings back memories of 2012, the last notable time the two drivers had a run-in on the track. Gordon retaliated against Bowyer for contact earlier in the race. The crash ruined Bowyer’s title chances and the driver of the No. 15 sprinted through the Phoenix infield to get to Gordon and his team.
This was clearly an accident. We can’t see this reigniting the feud.
At Kentucky, Whitt and Hornish had crumpled fenders when Whitt slammed the brakes to avoid Danica Patrick. The entrance and exit to the garages at Kentucky is the same (most tracks have a separate entrance and exit) and Whitt stopped suddenly to make sure he didn’t hit Patrick. Hornish didn’t stop in time and ran into the back of him.
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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!
