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Just a few laps shy of halfway, Ross Chastain attempted to time the restart while behind Joey Logano. Logano didn’t go when the Trackhouse driving expected him to. The result was a train-reaction crash behind them both.
Tyler Reddick, Christopher Bell, Aric Almirola, and Ryan Preece got the worst of it. All four went behind the wall and were out of the race.
Other drivers collected included Ryan Blaney, Ty Dillon, Justin Haley, Todd Gilliland, and Cody Ware.
Driver reactions
“I took off on the restart and went from second to third gear and all of a sudden everybody in front of us just stopped,” explained Almirola. “I think the leader was just playing games, trying to prevent the runs coming from behind and they stopped in the middle of the restart zone was right about where they should have been accelerating. It was just a huge accordion effect. We were back in 16th, so everybody just started stacking up and you can’t stop on a dime. It’s disappointing to get wrecked out of the race like that on a silly Mickey Mouse restart, but I should have known better.”
He wasn’t the only Stewart-Haas Racing driver involved. Preece gave his thoughts after being released from the infield care center: “It’s kind of stupid, to be honest with you on a professional level and we all wreck on a restart. I don’t know what happened, but just a victim of circumstances. It sucks. I was racing around Aric and we were just trying to be …