Botched restart sets off 18-car wreck at Dover

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The AAA400 Drive for Autism was red-flagged on Lap 354 of 400 when JimmieJohnson"s No. 48 Chevrolet failed to accelerate on a restart and caused a wreck that collected 18 cars at DoverInternationalSpeedway.

Starting from the outside lane on the front row, Johnson"s race-leading car was slow to come up to speed, causing MartinTruexJr. to rear-end the No. 48, and KevinHarvick to plow into Truex. That collision clogged the 1-mile track"s frontstretch, triggering a melee that involved nearly half the 40-car field.

"I got a great start in second gear," said Johnson, who led four laps but finished 25th. "As I went to put it in third (gear) and came across the shifting gate it never went into third. It actually got locked in the neutral area of the transmission. I had plenty of time. Martin was plenty patient with me and I was trying to get third and I couldn"t. I tried for fourth and third and fourth and I finally got hit. Just a freak deal with something with the transmission. I"ve never had that happen to me in my career."

Johnson spun into traffic behind him, damaging a list of cars that included: No. 18 KyleBusch, No. 1 JamieMcMurray, No. 43. AricAlmirola, No. 17 RickyStenhouseJr., No. 22 JoeyLogano, No. 16 GregBiffle, No. 88 DaleEarnhardtJr., No. 47 AJAllmendinger, No. 15 ClintBowyer, No. 31 RyanNewman, No. 95 MichaelMcDowell, No. 6 TrevorBayne, No. 13 CaseyMears, No. 27 PaulMenard and No. 11 DennyHamlin.

Truex was lined up fourth for the restart, taking instructions from his crew to let CarlEdwards pass him for third leaving pit road so that he would have the outside lane at the drop of the green. That placed him right behind Johnson"s lagging car, causing significant front-end damage.

Remarkably, Truex"s FurnitureRowRacing crew repaired his No. 78 Toyota enough to salvage a ninth-place finish.

"Just one of those deals: wrong place, wrong time," said Truex, who led twice for 47 laps. "Frustrating, but we got a top 10 out of it, so not too bad. The guys on pit road did a great job fixing it. Just hate that it happened. I wanted to be fourth on that restart, but I didn"t want to be fourth that bad. I should have been third so maybe I should have not let (Edwards) beat us off pit road. I don"t know how you can see those things coming. All in all good day, just bad finish."

All drivers were either evaluated or treated and released from the infield care center after the stack-up, but Almirola emerged holding an ice pack on his left hand.

"It just stinks we all got stacked up like that," said Almirola, who finished 31st. "I banged up my hand. I think I may have a broken finger, it is pretty sore and swollen. We worked really hard to get back on the lead lap and we were actually making a lot of progress it just took us all race to get back up on that lead lap. I hate that our day is going to turn out like that. That is a shame. Then to make matters worse I think I have a broken pinky finger. That isn"t very manly, is it?"

Harvick, who prevailed at the 1-mile track last fall, had led three times for a race-high 117 laps. The pole-starter finished 15th, the first driver one lap down.

Source: http://www.nascar.com/en_us/news-media/articles/2016/5/15/jimmie-johnson-big-wreck-dover-aaa-400-18-cars.html