{"id":642625,"date":"2026-05-02T08:10:11","date_gmt":"2026-05-02T08:10:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/642625\/"},"modified":"2026-05-02T08:10:11","modified_gmt":"2026-05-02T08:10:11","slug":"what-exactly-caused-that-shocking-crash-near-the-end-of-nascars-texas-truck-race","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/642625\/","title":{"rendered":"What exactly caused that shocking crash near the end of NASCAR’s Texas Truck race?"},"content":{"rendered":"

While the battle for the lead captivated viewers<\/a>, few eyeballs (and almost no cameras) were fixated on the very back of the field near the end of Friday’s NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series race.<\/p>\n

But suddenly, three trucks nowhere near the front of the pack suffered significant damage in a major crash on the frontstretch. The race was red-flagged, and TV cameras only caught part of the story, but two of the drivers involved revealed further details on the strange accident.<\/p>\n

Jake Garcia<\/a> was trying to limp around the track after an incident on the backstretch, where he got turned up into the wall after a tight three-wide battle for position with Tanner Gray<\/a> and Andres Perez. He cut down a tire soon after, hitting the wall at the entrance of Turn 3, but the race remained green.<\/p>\n

Garcia was well off the pace, and attempted to turn down across the track at the exit of Turn 4 to access pit road, but trucks were still coming. Justin Haley<\/a> evaded Garcia through the infield grass, only to have his nose dig in, forcing his\u00a0Ram 1500 up into a wheelie as it jumped off the ground before slamming the outside wall. Conner Jones, who was following Haley, made significant contact with Garcia, tearing the left-side body from his Nice Motorsports Chevrolet and exposing the chassis.\u00a0<\/p>\n

All drivers were checked and released from the infield care center, and Motorsport.com’s Matt Weaver was among those who caught up with Garcia and Jones back in the garage.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Garcia was following spotter’s guidance\u00a0
\n\"\"<\/p>\n

Watch: Garcia, Jones crash hard in late caution<\/p>\n

“I’m going probably 50mph, and those guys are going nearly 180mph,” explained Garcia. “It’s really hard to see out of those mirrors much further than about five car lengths back — especially out of the left-side mirror. In that situation, the spotter says clear down, and you gotta come to pit road, you got a flat tire. So, I did what I thought he wanted me to do. Obviously, we were not clear down.<\/p>\n

“I really feel bad about that. It could have been much worse. I’m glad everyone is okay, but I don’t know, just a really bad deal.”<\/p>\n

Garcia then expanded on the entire chain-of-events, and reiterated the fact that he was merely following the directions of his spotter.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“I was kind of in the hornet’s nest and I gathered it up,” said Garcia. “I was chasing it down the race track and I barely touched the 26 (Dawson Sutton<\/a>). And then it started to smoke. About two laps later down the backstretch, it started to hit the race track, so the left-front tire was down. Got up by the wall in Turns 3 and 4, got slowed, trying to make it to pit road. I was slow and cars kept going by and eventually they were by, and my spotter said I was clear down. I was trying to make it to pit road and we were not clear down. I don’t know what I would do any different, but obviously I shouldn’t have came down the race track but I thought it was fine to do. Just really want to apologize to everyone that was involved.”<\/p>\n

As for Jones, he wasn’t even battling anyone for position. He was riding around, several laps down, and was caught off-guard when Garcia’s truck appeared in front of him.<\/p>\n

“I was riding behind Haley,” Jones told Motorsport.com. “I just figured he was riding too. We were so far back, and then I guess he (Garcia) just decided he was going to cut across the field. I don’t really know what goes through your mind in that situation. He came up to me and told me his spotter cleared him. If so, then he needs to find a new spotter pretty quick.”<\/p>\n

Read Also:<\/p>\n

We want your opinion!<\/p>\n

What would you like to see on Motorsport.com?<\/p>\n

Take our 5 minute survey.<\/a><\/p>\n

– The Motorsport.com Team<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"While the battle for the lead captivated viewers, few eyeballs (and almost no cameras) were fixated on the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":642626,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[446],"tags":[49,48,45146,54583,634,18242,82,544,45082,239457],"class_list":["post-642625","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nascar","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-jake-garcia","tag-justin-haley","tag-nascar","tag-nascar-truck","tag-sports","tag-texas","tag-texas-motor-speedway","tag-what-exactly-caused-that-shocking-crash-near-the-end-of-nascars-texas-truck-race"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/642625","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=642625"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/642625\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/642626"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=642625"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=642625"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=642625"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}