DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — A sense of relative early calm in Friday night’s NASCAR Xfinity Series race evaporated with a multicar wreck that sent Austin Cindric’s car barrel-rolling at Daytona International Speedway.
Contact between Cindric’s No. 60 Ford and Matt Tifft’s No. 2 Chevrolet triggered a 17-car pile-up at Lap 81 of the Coca-Cola Firecracker 250. Tifft pressured Cindrick entering Turn 1 at the 2.5-mile track, snaring a host of cars behind their initial collision.
Cindric’s No. 60 Ford flipped several moments after initial contact, tumbling over twice before landing on its wheels in the middle of the track. He emerged under his own power, unhurt after what he said was his first airborne crash in a stock car.
RELATED: Cindric barrel rolls | In-car view of wreck
“Any time you wreck at one of these tracks you’re usually wrecking in front of somebody and it’s collecting a lot of good cars,” said Cindric, who took 33rd place in the 40-car field. “It’s a shame we had to do that with 20-some-odd laps to go, just trying to figure out which lane was gonna move forward. It’s unfortunate you have that kind of impatience, but that’s what you expect. Everyone is racing for spots on track and you can’t blame someone for being aggressive, I guess, in that scenario.”
Tifft said that he was taking advantage of an opening to the low side, that his car had handled best in the bottom lane for the bulk of the race.
“Unfortunately during the final stage, the 60 car kept going high to the middle and leaving a gap,” Tifft said, “so I started to move around him when he came down on me and spun us around.”
The crumpled vehicles of Ryan Truex, Tyler Reddick, Ryan Reed, Daniel Hemric and Brandon Jones were among the 17 cars in the smoky thicket. The melee red-flagged the race for just over 12 minutes for clean-up, setting the stage for a frantic dash to the finish.
Reddick, who prevailed in the Xfinity season opener at Daytona in the closest finish in national-series history, said he had already impacted the outside retaining wall when he looked over his left shoulder to see Cindric’s car on its roof.
“With that many laps left, there’s not a lot of give left to be had out there. Everyone’s trying to take,” said Reddick, who was credited with 31st place. “It’s just wrong place, wrong time. Almost squeaked through it.”
Said Cindric: “That was a first for me, and I didn’t know what to expect. When I knew I was going over, you just accept it, and I pulled my legs and pulled my arms in and just kind of held tight and closed my eyes. You open your eyes and everything is happy, happy days. It’s unfortunate I had to go through that experience, but just gotta move on.”