Michael McDowell and Josh Berry had two of the most intense incidents in Saturday night’s in the Coke Zero Sugar 400.
McDowell’s occurred first with nine laps to go at Daytona International Speedway. The polesitter was leading the field into Turn 1 on the outside lane when he was tagged by Ford teammate Austin Cindric and sent spinning to the left. McDowell’s car was perpendicular to the field when hit in the driver’s side door by Joey Logano and lifted off the ground.
Fortunately, the car did not flip and came back down on all four wheels. McDowell was checked and released from the infield care center and said he felt fine. The incident, McDowell said, was a “wrong angle at the wrong time” event, but he didn’t want to place blame.
McDowell led 26 laps. He was classified 30th.
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“It was going over,” McDowell said. “I had my eyes closed, but whoever hit me, it felt like it set me back down because I had that moment where it got real light and it got real quiet and then I got hit, and then I was back on the ground. I haven’t seen the replay, but I’m just glad Josh Berry is okay. That one looked definitely worse than mine.
“It’s the end of a Daytona race and these things happen. Everybody is pushing hard and we had guys up there that had to win, so you know everybody is going to go for it.”
By the time McDowell was cleared and doing interviews, he watched the final wreck of the night occur involving Berry. The field was two-by-two going down the backstretch with two laps to go when there was contact between Kyle Busch and Cindric. It sent Cindric, who was leading the inside lane, into the driver’s side of Berry’s car, who was leading the outside lane.
Berry spun left to the apron and his car lifted into the air and flipped onto its roof. While on its roof, the car slid to the inside wall and hit with the front end. The impact sent Berry, still upside down, into multiple rotations before finally coming to a stop. NASCAR safety workers turned the car back over, and Berry immediately climbed out.
“Yeah, I’m all good,” the Stewart-Haas Racing driver said. “It actually wasn’t as bad as it looked. But, man, I’m bummed because we had a hell of a night going. Just such a great job by Rodney [Childers] and this whole 4 team; the car was so strong and we were in position.
“I’m really proud of the job I did tonight and really proud of the job the whole team did because we were in contention. That could have been our day. But it didn’t work out. I just want to thank everybody at Stewart-Haas Racing and Ford and NASCAR for building safe race cars; Eero for coming on board tonight. It’s disappointing, but whether we would have won or flipped, we’re going to go to work Monday and try to win next week.”
Berry led nine laps but finished 26th. Although he flipped over, Berry noted that NASCAR’s decision to remove the grass on the backstretch after Ryan Preece’s crash in the same race last year kept him from barrel-rolling.
“As bad as it looked, they made a big improvement over what Ryan had last year,” Berry said. “I just can’t believe we flipped two of our Stewart-Haas cars in a row like that.”