DOVER, Del. — His eyes raw and his face flushed, the emotion was evident from Noah Gragson following his waning-lap wreck out of Friday’s Camping World Truck race at Dover International Speedway.
The sophomore driver called himself “dejected,” his typically- playful personality dwindled to a melancholy state as he spoke of his late-race aggression with race-winner Johnny Sauter that led to a hard hit into the wall.
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“I blew the opportunity,” Gragson said. “There’s so many small opportunities you get as a race car driver to win these races. Just devastated. Definitely not proud of the way that I raced him. I wasn’t trying to wreck him … just really hard racing there at the end. Just really bummed out for everyone that supports me back home in Las Vegas … everybody who makes this possible. Just unacceptable on my part.”
Gragson was racing Sauter side-by-side for the win with two laps to go when his No. 18 Kyle Busch Motorsports Toyota spiraled down and hit the wall hard after he tried to side-draft Sauter’s No. 21. After his No. 18 came to a stop, Gragson sat in his car for a moment, as he hit the steering wheel with his fists and put his hands to his helmet.
It was “wreckers or checkers” for him, he said, and unfortunately, his No. 18 ended up on a tow truck with a 20th-place finish instead of in Victory Lane.
“Felt like I just woke up from a dream, I couldn’t believe it happened,” Gragson said of that moment. “Just really disappointed in myself.”
MORE: Sauter on Gragson: ‘I would have raced him the same way’
Gragson passed team owner Kyle Busch after leaving the infield care center, stopping for a brief conversation. His last stop was in Victory Lane, where he apologized to Sauter for the way the last laps played out.
“(I wasn’t) trying to wreck him or anything,” Gragson said. “That’s not the way I race — I wanted to win it fair and square. Sometimes when you’re at these races, it’s getting down to the end, you’re trying to push it, you sometimes step over the line. It wasn’t intentional at all.”
Sauter said he was “glad he came over and apologized. So, no harm, no foul…
“He’s learning, he’s pushing the envelope,” he said. “He’s got to figure out where the line is.”
Both Gragson and Sauter will compete in Saturday’s NASCAR Xfinity Series race at Dover (12:30 p.m. ET on FS1, MRN, SiriusXM), with Gragson competing in the No. 18 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota, while Sauter will race the No. 23 GMS Racing Chevrolet.