Mid-race wreck damages hopes of 3 Richard Childress Racing drivers
Casey Mears finished 11th in the Lenox Industrial Tools 301 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race at New Hampshire Motor Speedway and was the highest finishing Richard Childress Racing driver. // Mark Sluder, NASCAR Scene
LOUDON, N.H. – Richard Childress Racing endured a rather abrupt end to most of its chances to perform well in Sunday's NASCAR Sprint Cup Lenox Industrial Tools 301.
Or so it seemed when drivers Jeff Burton, Kevin Harvick and Casey Mears were all caught up in a crash on lap 175 in the New Hampshire Motor Speedway race. Mears recovered to finish 11th, but Burton and Harvick didn't fare as well. While each managed to be running at the end of the race, Burton finished 31st and Harvick 34th.
Harvick came close to avoiding the incident, making late contact with the car of Earnhardt Ganassi Racing's Martin Truex Jr. as it came back up across the track. The incident started with contact between Joe Gibbs Racing's Kyle Busch and Truex on a restart when one of the cars in front of them failed to get up to speed and both had to check up.
"There were cars spinning, and I tried to slow down and minimize the damage as much as you can at that point," Harvick said. "I don’t know, I hit two or three cars as they were coming up the race track the wrong way. They just wrecked in front of us and I couldn't get slowed down. … The car was running really good and we made up a ton of position there on the last run. We had a good car. … This is typical for the year. It's been a rough year."
Harvick fell two more spots in the standings, to 27th, as a result of the crash.
Burton, too, had been competitive in the race. For him, the crash was another blow in his effort to make the field for the Chase For The Sprint Cup. Burton was 12th in the standings two weeks ago, but has now fallen to 16th, 108 points behind the 12th-place driver.
"We were really competitive today," Burton said. "Given the right track position, I think we were as fast as anybody, and that's what I'm going to take from it. We didn't do anything wrong today. We didn't cause a wreck. We got into a wreck; I don't even know what happened but it really doesn't matter. So we'll go build some more stuff and come back. I'm really proud of everybody because we ran really well today. We needed a real good finish for the points, but we needed a good run."
Despite his hit in the standings, Burton said that he remains confident the team can make the Chase field.
"If we run well enough, the points will take care of themselves," he said. "There's still plenty of time. Nine races is an eternity in this sport. The Chase is 10 races long and think about all the stuff that happens in 10 races. So this is nine races and we still can do it; it's going to be hard, but we can do it."
