Apparent contact between Greg Biffle and Jamie McMurray set off a major crash that has put the Sprint Unlimited at Daytona under a red flag at Lap 48 of 75.
Coming into the tri-oval, McMurray was knocked out of the outside lane and then spun back into traffic. When the ensuing mayhem was complete, a total of 12 drivers had been involved in the crash.
The list includes: McMurray, Kevin Harvick, Kasey Kahne, Denny Hamlin, Tony Stewart, Clint Bowyer, Ricky Stenhouse Jr., Kyle Busch, Paul Menard, Kurt Busch, Aric Almirola, and Jimmie Johnson.
“When you’re the 16 [Biffle] and you see the guy starting to get loose, your instinct is to stay in the game and make sure you’re not invovled in the wreck,” McMurray said. “Sometimes, you’re catching it and he’s pushing and you can’t hang on.
Bowyer, whose car was tagged by Menard in the crash, simply told Fox Sports that he saw a car backwards “and then I hit.”
“[My spotter] told me to get low, get low, and low is in the grass,” Bowyer said. “These things don’t seem to like to go through the grass very well … It’s kind of a bummer. I was just starting to have some fun and get up through them. But the good news is we have a big race [Daytona 500] coming up next week, and we’ll go at it again.”
As for Menard’s view, he thought that McMurray would keep spinning into the infield grass instead of back into the field.
“He just came across my nose and I thought he was keep going to the inside, and he hooked,” Menard said. “[He] came back right, and I piled into him.”
The remaining field resumed green-flag racing with 26 laps to go.
