DOVER, Del. \u2014 The first\u00a0NASCAR All-Star Race\u00a0at\u00a0Dover Motor Speedway\u00a0got off to a fiery start Sunday with a Lap 2 crash that involved three former winners.<\/p>\n
The wreck was triggered by\u00a0Roush Fenway Keselowski Racing driver Ryan Preece, who came down the banking in Turn 1 and made contact with Todd Gilliland.<\/p>\n
Defending Cup Series champion Kyle Larson, a three-time All-Star Race winner, hit the wall in his No. 5 Chevrolet after colliding with Gilliland\u2019s No. 34 Ford. The pileup also included past All-Star Race winners and series champions Ryan Blaney and Chase Elliott, as well as Daniel Suarez, John Hunter Nemechek and Michael McDowell.<\/p>\n
Preece\u2019s No. 60 Ford made a heavy impact with the outside wall,\u00a0causing the rear end to explode in flames. Preece climbed out unscathed and was quickly seen and released from the track\u2019s infield care centre.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m fine, I seem to take big hits,\u201d said Preece, who was involved\u00a0in a memorable rollover in the August 2023 race at Daytona. \u201cI don\u2019t know what happened. But if it was anything, it was probably just too close on my part to go into Turn 1 and just got sideways. So if it was my fault, I\u2019m sorry.\u201d<\/p>\n
The crash came just after the green flag in the first of two 75-lap segments with 36 cars. The field will be narrowed to 26 for the final 200-lap segment on the 1-mile oval.<\/p>\n
Blaney, Elliott and Larson are among 19 drivers locked into the last segment, but they aren\u2019t allowed to use a backup car. Elliott\u2019s No. 9 Chevy had minor damage, but it was unclear if the cars of Blaney and Larson would be repairable.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know if we can get it fixed or not, but you never know,\u201d Blaney said. \u201cI see my guys bringing some bumpers out and stuff, so maybe we\u2019ll be able to get in the last segment.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Coca-Cola 600, the longest race of the season, will take place May 24 at Charlotte Motor Speedway. Ross Chastain is the defending race winner (and is seeking his first victory since then).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"DOVER, Del. \u2014 The first\u00a0NASCAR All-Star Race\u00a0at\u00a0Dover Motor Speedway\u00a0got off to a fiery start Sunday with a Lap…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":676114,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[446],"tags":[49,48,634,82],"class_list":["post-676113","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nascar","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nascar","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/676113","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=676113"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/676113\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/676114"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=676113"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=676113"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=676113"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}