Martin Truex Jr. expected to be a challenger Sunday at Sonoma Raceway, but any chance of winning ended when he went spinning nose-first into a stack of tire barriers.
Martin Truex Jr. crashes head-on into tire barriers at Sonoma Raceway
Contact with David Ragan caused Martin Truex Jr. to wreck hard Sunday.
Truex’s was running side-by-side with David Ragan when the two touched through the esses on the 10-turn road course. Ragan appeared to clip the rear of Truex’s car deliberately to turn him around, as just before the incident Truex had driven into Ragan. Truex called the initial contact incidental, coming as a byproduct of a restart two laps before, but said Ragan retaliated by intentionally crashing him.
“When you start around 20th on those restarts it is just a recipe for disaster,” Truex said. “I was trying to be aggressive, made some moves. I had a couple of cars passed, and then the lane I was in jammed up and the guys I had passed got back by me. You just get frustrated, you lose patience and I got into (Ragan) doors a little bit in Turn 7 and I guess he didn’t like it and he figured he would just dump me.
“He probably has one coming, but other than that it’s just part of the restart deal. I hate that I got my guys car tore up.”
The contact with the tire barriers was so significant it damaged the concrete wall stationed behind the tire barriers. Truex was uninjured, but the No. 78 Furniture Row Racing car suffered heavy damage.
Truex entered the weekend with 14 top-10 finishes in 15 races this season. He won at Sonoma in 2013 and had qualified 12th for Sunday’s race.
“We had a decent car,” Truex said. “We made some adjustments there and felt like it made a big improvement just didn’t get to show it.”
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