Kenseth, Gordon point fingers over Sunday's wreck
Jeff Gordon denies Matt Kenseth's charge that it was Gordon's "laying back" on a restart Sunday that led to their crash Sunday in the closing laps of the UAW-Dodge 400 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.
Gordon was trailing Kenseth on a restart with five laps to go in the race, and when Dale Earnhardt Jr. spun the tires on his No. 88 Chevrolet, Kenseth darted to the outside while Gordon went inside Earnhardt Jr. After both passed Earnhardt Jr., Gordon slid up the track into Kenseth, causing both to spin. Gordon slammed the inside wall and was knocked out of the race, while Kenseth limped to a 20th-place finish.
“It’s disappointing, but it all started back on the restart,” Kenseth said after the race. “Jeff is kind of famous for laying back, and NASCAR has a rule that you can’t lay back more than a car length or you can be black-flagged, but it’s usually not enforced, so I saw him laying back.
“I knew he was going to get a run on me, so I laid back a little bit. [Leader] Carl [Edwards] went late and that kind of started the chain, and we were three-wide going into [Turn] 1. We came off 2, and I was up as high as I thought I could get, and Jeff just came across. Whether it was on purpose or not, it just kind of wiped us out.”
Gordon responded to Kenseth on Monday at the NASCAR test at Phoenix International Raceway by saying, “First you need to talk to your teammate who was behind me.”
“Any restart we have, I’m looking more behind me that I am in front of me,” Gordon said. “I want to see what the guys are doing behind me because I want to get a good restart, but I want to make sure somebody doesn’t get a jump on me and get me in a bad position.
“I started looking in my mirror, and Greg Biffle [Kenseth’s Roush Fenway Racing teammate] was laying back quite a bit. Actually, my spotter came on and said, ‘They’re laying back behind you.’ So I dropped back to him. Then as we rolled up there, we sort of came together a little bit more.
“I didn’t really feel like anybody was laying back a ton. The biggest issue with that whole thing is Junior spun his tires. I did get a pretty good restart but not really much better than Matt. It’s just once he got beside Junior, it stalled him out and gave me the momentum.”
