Larson, who drives for Hendrick Motorsports, was grateful the wreck wasn’t worse. The Next Gen car is entering its second NASCAR season, and the organization continues to make necessary changes to improve safety in an inherently dangerous sport.
“You see things that could have easily put me in the car, whether it was the bars that had completely broken and could have hit me. Or what if I had a second impact? ” Larson said Saturday. “I’m not criticizing NASCAR on this at all. They worked very hard with this car to make it safer. I was very grateful that they took my car and Preece’s car afterwards to dive deeper into it and see how they can make it even safer.
He was lucky not to be seriously injured. These chassis are built by some random company. Never seen this happen when chassis were built in-house pic.twitter.com/Qx9Uk68uPP
– 93turbo (@93turbosnk) April 29, 2023
NASCAR’s ongoing investigation includes a reconstruction of the accident through computer-aided designs and review of on-board camera film.
“It’s clear that changes need to be made,” said reigning NASCAR champion Joey Logano. “I don’t know how you fix this.”
Logano and Busch were among many drivers who questioned whether the crash could have been fatal if Larson had been hit in the driver’s door.
NASCAR said Saturday that the driver’s side construction is “several times stronger than the right.”
“There’s no other form of racing, in my opinion, that takes safety more seriously than they do,” Larson said of NASCAR. “But that doesn’t mean the sport is safe.”
At Talladega, Ross Chastain pushed his car into the middle of a third lane and his car bounced into Noah Gragson, who hit the wall to trigger the crash. Larson was thrown into the grass and his car backed into traffic and was struck by Preece. The visor of Preece’s helmet was split open by the blow.
“It was probably one of the hardest hits I’ve ever taken in a race car, and I hit walls with shifters hanging on concrete, concrete walls with dirt behind them ” said Preece.
A year after the Cup race at Dover was postponed to a Monday, the weather again caused another timetable change: Saturday’s qualifying session was rainy.
Kyle Busch starts on pole and Joe Gibbs Racing driver Christopher Bell joins him on the front row. The Ford drivers took advantage of the rain, with Ryan Blaney starting third, followed by Brad Keselowski, Chris Buescher and Chase Briscoe.
Heavy rain is forecast for Sunday and NASCAR raised the green flag an hour at 1:11 p.m.
. . .
Choking as he approached the checkered flag, Ryan Truex won for the first time in 188 career NASCAR starts in all three national series in Saturday’s Xfinity Series race at Dover Motor Speedway.
“People who know me know I’m not an emotional guy,” Truex said. “It took me a minute before I could open the keyboard and say anything because I couldn’t really speak. It’s been a long road and a lot of doubts along the way and I wonder if it’s ever going to happen, am I good enough to do it?
Truex joked that he held his breath in nervous anticipation during the final 30 laps of a race he had dominated from the start. He worried about the caution flag going off, the risk of a flat tire, a crash, anything that could derail a 13-year wait for a NASCAR victory.
The 31-year-old younger brother of former NASCAR champion Martin Truex Jr. was certainly pretty good on the concrete track. He swept the first two stages and went the entire stretch, leading 124 of 200 laps to win by 4.82 seconds over Josh Berry, who will start Sunday in the Cup series for injured Alex Bowman, who suffered a fractured vertebra in a sprint car accident this week.
