NSCS: Teams Forced to Back-Up Cars After Practice Incidents

It was a very eventful practice this afternoon for the Budweiser Duels tomorrow evening at the Daytona International Speedway for many drivers. The two incidents will force atleast six teams to switch to a back-up car for the Daytona 500.
 
In the first on-track incident, Cole Whitt blew a tire going into turn three. Vickers, with a natural reaction, turned in-front of Casey Mears to send him into the wall. A hood flap flies off of Vickers car and stuck right into the nose of the No. 24 car of Jeff Gordon. Mears was able to save the car and continued on.

Brian Vickers will be the only driver who will need to go to a back-up car from the first incident. Cole Whitt was going to a back-up, but when his teammate Parker Kligerman got into the second incident, team decided to repair the primary No. 26.

The second crash involved five cars that started just past the start/finish line. The incident started between Matt Kenseth and Joey Logano. Kenseth came up to block Logano, which sent him up the track into Parker Kligerman. Kligerman’s car caught air and brushed the catch fence, ripping some of the fencing and a camera away, but no one was hurt. Ryan Truex, Dave Blaney and Paul Menard also was involved as a chain reaction.

“We were coming off four there and the 20 started making a move to go down. I assumed he was gonna go down there. I had the run, so I was gonna fill that hole and then he started to come back up and I was there,” said Logano. “Maybe I shouldn’t have been racing as hard as I was there in practice, but everybody was in a big pack there trying to make things happen. As soon as he came back up I checked up a little bit and then the 21 hit me from behind and we spun out. It happens. That’s Daytona for you. We have another good Shell/Pennzoil Ford in the trailer that they backed out and are getting through tech now so we’ll get that out and make sure it’s good for the Duel and get through that and we’ll be fine.”

This will force Ryan Truex, Joey Logano, Parker Kligerman, Paul Menard and Dave Blaney all to a back-up car. After the crash, Blaney told Fox Sports 1 reporters that Humphrey-Smith Racing has no back-up car this weekend.

Practice will resume later on tonight at the Daytona International Speedway, which can be seen live on FOX Sports 1 from 6:30-8:00 p.m. Et. It will be interesting to see how many racing teams will participate in the event.

Brett Winningham
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