The first major accident in Sunday's Geico 500 at Talladega Superspeedway occurred in the early going and involved 15 cars.
On lap 47, Trevor Bayne, the 2011 Daytona 500 winner, lost control of his No. 6 Roush Fenway Racing Ford and spun into the outside wall along the backstretch, triggering the pileup.
While running in a tight pack of cars, Paul Menard was riding in the outside lane just behind Bayne when Bayne lost control. Kurt Busch ran just below in the inside lane. Neither of those drivers made contact at the time of the incident.
"What I felt was when the 27 (Menard) was around us on the top there, it's just going to pull you around almost every time, and Kurt (Busch) was really close to my left rear, and that's double trouble," Bayne said. "When you get the air moving around here at these high speeds, it's as much as physically hitting each other. I hate it for our team. We had a super fast car."
Kasey Kahne, Landon Cassill, Kyle Larson, Greg Biffle, David Ragan and Bayne had to take their cars to the garage after sustaining heavy damage to them. Joey Logano, who won the Daytona 500 earlier this year and Saturday's Xfinity Series race at Talladega, Kevin Harvick, the defending Sprint Cup Series champion, Danica Patrick, Tony Stewart and Ricky Stenhouse Jr. were among those involved in the incident but were able to continue in the race.
"I saw a couple of cars get crossed up about 10 car lengths in front of me, and I had slowed down pretty well and thought I would be in good shape and miss the wreck, but someone got into the back of the 51 (Justin Allgaier), and he just came right across my nose," Ragan said.
This is Ragan's last race as substitute driver for the injured Kyle Busch in Joe Gibbs Racing's No. 18 Toyota. Starting next weekend at Kansas Speedway, Ragan is taking over for Brian Vickers in Michael Waltrip Racing's No. 55 Toyota.
The lap 47 incident was the second caution of the race. NASCAR had to halt the event briefly (11 minutes, 15 seconds) for track clean-up efforts.
The first caution happened on lap 19 when Michael Waltrip and Brian Scott crashed in turn 1.
[SportsNetwork.com]
