SPEEDWAY, Ind. — The Brickyard 400 is officially back.
Opportunities to pass, however? That’s another story.
The NASCAR Cup Series made its annual trip to Indianapolis Motor Speedway on Sunday (July 21), though this time, the road course was dumped in favor of the oval for the first time since 2020.
As such, this was the first time the Next Gen race car would compete on the oval. With the car performing better on intermediates and superspeedways over short tracks and road courses, hope was high that racing would be intense throughout most of the afternoon.
But after a tame first stage, it was clear that the only way to be able to make moves and have a shot to win was through pit stops. There was a noticeable lack of passing under green, which essentially led to train racing.
It was evident that the only time drivers were going to be able to gain ground under green (sans green flag pit stops) was on restarts. So following the restart to begin stage two, there was noticeable heightened aggression for drivers to get all they could.
It only took 24 laps before the aggression came to a head.
On a lap 74 restart, Chase Briscoe and William Byron made contact, turning the latter into the paths of Ryan Preece and Harrison Burton. Byron then bounced off the outside wall (which has no SAFER barrier) before sliding directly into the path of AJ Allmendinger, who tattooed Byron and sent him careening into the inside wall, destroying his No. 24.
“Got back there where we probably shouldn’t have been and got run over,” a noticeably displeased Byron said upon leaving the infield care center. “[Briscoe] was making a bunch of crazy moves down the frontstretch, then kind of missed the corner in [turn] 2, pulled up right in front of me and checked us all up.”
Allmendinger knew that restarts were going to be chaotic, especially midfield.
“The restarts, everybody’s gonna be aggressive,” Allmendinger said. “Because you know that that’s the time to make up the most spots. It’s tough to pass.”
“When you get to the outside, it’s game over here,” said Burton, whose day ended due to a broken control arm from the crash. “So everyone’s kind of fighting to try and at least be in the bottom two rows, and if you can get someone top of three[-wide], they’re gonna be 10 rows back.
“I guess that was the idea there. It just didn’t work out.”