NASCAR Ford Drivers Take Each Other Out At New Hampshire: Video

Rain wreaked havoc at New Hampshire Motor Speedway on June 23^rd, 2024, red-flagging the race with just over 80 laps left on the board. When the race resumed after over two hours of waiting, the Cup Series teams slapped wet-weather tires on the race cars and turned them loose on the damp track. Ryan Blaney, driver of the No. 12 NASCAR Ford Mustang Dark Horse, seemed to be the car to beat as they took the green, but his hopes of winning two weekends in a row were dashed after contact with a fellow Blue Oval racer sent him into the wall.

The crash went down with just nine laps left. Christopher Bell’s No. 20 Toyota TRD Camry took off with the lead, leaving Blaney and the No. 34 Mustang of Michael McDowell to fight for the runner-up position on one of over a dozen restarts. McDowell sent it a little too hard into Turn 1, but miscalculated the move, sliding right into Blaney and sending him into the wall. The wreck took them both out of contention for the win.

McDowell was able to continue, and the No. 34 NASCAR Ford was credited with a 15^th-place finish. Blaney, meanwhile, was relegated to 25^th.

“I know [McDowell’s] got to win and all that and that’s his excuse but you have to like calculate, be a little more calculated than that and just stinks that we’re at the expense of it,” Blaney said. “But man, I thought we had a decent shot to contend. I was happy because we came in, put tires on, made a big adjustment and I was looking forward to kind of restarting behind Bell and seeing if we could have anything for him and just never really got a chance.”

McDowell defended his risky move, saying, “I was in a do-or-die situation and I had to go for it. I know it was a low-percentage move, but I had to try. All the guys that went to the bottom, and one and two on those restarts got freight-trained, so I knew I needed to enter in the middle. I just got the left sides on the wet paint and it just kind of took off.”

Bell won the race, but it wasn’t all bad for The Blue Oval. Chase Briscoe, driver of the No. 14 NASCAR Ford, finished second, and Josh Berry’s No. 4 Mustang finished third.

# – Rookie
i – Points ineligible
* – Part-time driver

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