BK Racing teammates Austin Theriault and Tyler Reddick were involved in a wreck during the second round of Camping World Truck Series qualifying Friday afternoon at Kansas Speedway.
Reddick, who won the season-opening race at Daytona and was fifth at Martinsville, lost control of his truck, hit the outside retaining wall and the trailing Theriault couldn’t avoid Reddick’s spinning truck.
Both trucks, owned by Sprint Cup star Brad Keselowski, suffered significant damage, requiring them to go to back-up rides.
“We had a pretty loose truck in the first round of qualifying,” Reddick told Fox Sports 1. “I knew it was going to be somewhat of a challenge to make sure I didn’t make the same mistake in the second round.
“I didn’t really do that that well. I tried to figure out where Brandon Jones was going to go on the racetrack. I didn’t know if he was going to cut off early or whatnot. I just went a groove higher, got loose, ended up in the fence and collected my teammate in the process.”
Theriault, 21, said the wreck “was my first big hit. I was going pretty fast at these 1.5-mile tracks. It’s an unfortunate day. But both teams strive to bring real fast trucks to the racetrack.
“I didn’t have anywhere to go. I tried turning down a bit and the minute I tried to put wheel into it, it got loose. We have a good backup truck and we’ll see what happens tonight.”
Theriault couldn’t see ahead of him because of the smoke that came off Reddick’s truck.
“The smoke started appearing, and at that point, I barely saw something blue out of the corner of my eyes and it was too late,” Theriault said. “I was hard on the break, had wheel in it, it just didn’t want to respond and at that point it was history.”
Keselowski made a couple of tweets about the incident, including the following.
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Yep. Bummer. We have more trucks and a great team to get through it. https://t.co/5D89LDzI2P
— Brad Keselowski (@keselowski) May 8, 2015
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Chad Kendrick, crew chief for Theriault, said both teams have equally strong back-up trucks.
“Both teams have two really good backups ready to go, ready to hit the track, actually,” Kendrick told Fox Sports 1. “From that standpoint, we’re just more concerned we have to start in the back now.
“This truck is just as good as the one we wrecked and we’re an organization that’s ready for something like this.”
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