The NASCAR Cup Series returned to St. Louis this weekend for the second time. Kyle Busch ran what Fox reporter Regan Smith described as “the perfect weekend” en route to his third win of the 2023 season (Fontana and Talladega).
To put it quite simply, the race was…weird.
An early spin from Tyler Reddick followed by a nearly 2-hour weather delay was only an appetizer for the incoming chaos.
Once the race resumed from the delay, the rest of the first stage went green til the end, with Kyle Busch taking the win.
Stage two started with an immediate caution with the spin of Michael McDowell, who used pit road strategy with a 2 tire stop to advance into the top 10.
About 35 laps later, Carson Hocevar brought out a caution as he fell victim to a failed brake rotor sending him into the wall and out of the race. He had been running top 20 in his first career Cup appearance, notably outpacing Corey LaJoie, the usual driver of the 7, who was driving Chase Elliott’s Hendrick Motorsports 9 car.
During the yellow, the race track experienced an internet outage, taking the TV, Radio, and online stream off the air entirely, with additional impacts on the pit lane for scanning data from teams.
Once the broadcast came back online, the race resumed and ran green to the end of the stage, with Ryan Blaney taking the stage win.
Just shy of 35 laps into stage 3, Tyler Reddick, who spun early and recovered to run top 5 for the majority of the race, suffered a nearly identical accident to Hocevar. Heading into turn one, Reddick blew a brake rotor and slammed the wall, ending his otherwise decent day.
Less than 30 laps later, Noah Gragson fell victim to an expired brake rotor as well, however, he spun his car to the inside and slammed the outside wall much harder than Hocevar and Reddick. The amount of debris and fluid on the track drew the second red flag of the race.
Once the race resumed, it seemed to be business as usual once again, until the stalled car of Gray Gaulding brought out yet another caution.
On the restart, Austin Cindric made contact with Austin Dillon, which sent Dillon nearly head-on into the turn-one wall, taking Ricky Stenhouse with him.
The impact to the wall was significant enough to render repairs, drawing the third red flag of the race.
The laps were winding down, and Kyle Busch had retaken the lead. With less than 20 laps in the race, the final brake rotor failure took place on Tyler Reddick’s teammate Bubba Wallace, taking him out of a potential fourth-straight top-10 run. This yellow forced overtime.
On the restart, Kyle Busch took off with the lead and scored win #3 on the year, after scoring the pole and leading 121 of 243 laps.
In addition to the on-track chaos, a pit crew member, Thomas Hatcher from the 43 team, was involved in a pit road incident and was taken from the track in the back of an ambulance to a local hospital for further evaluation.
Looking on to Sonoma, Ross Chastain is looking to have a good run after 4 straight finishes outside of the top 10, which cost him the regular season points lead.
Chastain’s teammate Daniel Suarez looks to repeat on the road, winning last year’s race in wine country.
With eleven races and six spots left until the playoffs begin, the ever-crucial summer stretch is just getting started.
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