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A sudden downpour at New Hampshire Motor Speedway led to a multiple-car incident involving Kyle Busch, Martin Truex Jr. and Denny Hamlin shortly after the start of Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series race.
Busch and Truex were running first and second on Lap 6, when they suddenly lost control and sped into the wall at Turn 1. Their two Toyotas came away with massive damage.
Behind them, his Joe Gibbs Racing teammate Hamlin sped as he raced for fifth place, but dodged the wall and continued.
The race was cautioned and then signaled with a red flag as the rain accumulated on the track.
Busch was one of the many riders who reported precipitation early in the race.
“We started the race in a fog – we never should have gone green to start,” Busch told NBC Sports. “But then it just got worse turn by turn. The previous lap (the crash) I got into the (turn 1) and it really pushed the nose and I was able to keep it under control. It was not humid enough.
“Then the next time I was over there, damn it, I raised to the flagpole – maybe a little past the flagpole, don’t be too dramatic – and I just backed it up. We did. We had been talking about it for two turns, that it was raining.
Busch then stopped before continuing: “It doesn’t make sense to say what I mean. It doesn’t do you any good.
Truex also said he nearly destroyed the tower before slipping into the wall.
“The previous round, I went into (round) one and did the same thing, and yelled over the radio that the track was wet,” he told NBC Sports. “As, wet, wet. I tried to back it up and got in there and it just kept going. I couldn’t even slow it down.
Unlike Busch, whose car was deemed too damaged to continue, Truex said “we can do some work” on his car to continue the race.
As for Hamlin, he told NBC Sports the situation was “a bad thing” for race officials.
Asked how communication could be improved to avoid this situation in the future, Hamlin said: “You just rely on NASCAR to do its part and it’s up to local observers to tell them when the surface is unsafe. , whether it’s debris, rain – whatever it is, right? That’s what their job is to do.
“They can’t see from the tower. I mean, they can see the rain, but they don’t know how wet the surface is. It’s the job of the local manager to tell them that.
“I’ll be interested to see what communication has taken place during this 30-40 second period. “
NASCAR Vice President of Competition Steve O’Donnell joined the NBC Sports broadcast booth to explain the race officials’ perspective.
“We can only get out of the pre-race talks we have before the race with Kip Childress, who drives our pace car – constant communication with him before the start of the race,” said O’Donnell. “Are we ready to go? “Even the lap before the start, we go green, Kip gave us the green light to start this race.
“Then as the race started to progress, just before Kyle let go into Turn 2, obviously in wet track conditions, communication with us was coming from the flag pole, we see some haze. Under all normal circumstances, when we hear this, our next call is to the race car, which is here at turn 1: “Do you see something on your windshield?” The drops began to accumulate. Kip communicated it.
“As Tim Bermann is about to bring out the yellow we are looking down and car 18 (Kyle Busch) is already coming off. I have been here for several years. This is the first time I see this in terms of how quickly it has happened to us. Certainly in the mist, we have already run in the mist. The track got slippery, obviously, in a hurry and it’s unfortunate what happened.
The red flag was finally raised at 5:11 p.m. ET. The delay lasted an hour and 41 minutes.
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