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Carson Hocevar took the blame for the crash that flipped Joey Logano onto his roof late in Sunday’s YellaWood 500 at Talladega Superspeedway, saying he was looking in his mirror when he hit Logano “at the wrong time.”
The 15-car crash came on Lap 183, with five laps left. Logano spun off the bumper of Hocevar’s No. 77 Spire Motorsports Chevrolet in the tri-oval, hit the outside wall and slid across the start-finish line on his roof.
https://x.com/NASCAR/status/2114471447947022394
Hocevar: ‘That’s my fault’
Hocevar said he was watching for where the lanes behind him would merge when he made contact.
“I didn’t see a lot,” Hocevar said after the race. “I was more so looking to my left and my rearview for what lanes we’re going to merge to, because we’re all on the top. And then all of a sudden, the bottom came in, and the bottom and top were going to try and merge to the middle and try to get everything, so I didn’t really see anything.”
“I was more so looking at my rearview, and when I looked up, it was more so because I felt a bump, and I just hit him in the rear at the wrong time. I was making forward progress with him, so I feel bad, because we were obviously making a lot of headway there and doing really good.”
“But I was more so looking at my rearview, so that’s on me for that, but yeah, that’s my fault.”
Logano and Herbst walk away
Logano climbed out after safety workers turned his car over. “There were some vicious hits in that one. I’m just happy to be alive,” he said. Logano finished 34th and is fifth in the Chase standings, 100 points behind Kyle Larson.
Riley Herbst hit the inside wall nearly head-on in the same crash. Both drivers were checked at the infield care center and released. Herbst left with his left wrist and forearm wrapped.
From the garage to sixth
Hocevar’s car was towed to the garage with flat tires and a hole in the right-side door. His team changed four tires during the red flag and got him back out ahead of the field, and he finished sixth.
“I have to really thank the tow truck guy for getting us back to pit road quickly,” Hocevar said. “I thought we had to beat the pace car to the line, but I think we could have waited another lap, so we actually beat the field and got almost a lap ahead, so that just shows how fast they were.”
Hocevar, who won the spring Talladega race, is 10th in the Chase standings, 198 points behind Larson. The Cup Series races next at Martinsville Speedway in Ridgeway, Virginia, on Sunday, November 1, at 2 p.m. ET on NBC.
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