By Caleb Whisler, Staff Writer
Cole Custer, who many proclaimed as the 1.5-mile king in 2017, had his day ended early in the Rinnai 250 at Atlanta Motor Speedway on lap 11.
Custer was battling for position with John Hunter Nemechek and Elliott Sadler. The accident began when Sadler tapped the bumper of Nemechek. After the tap of the bumper, Nemechek got loose on the frontstretch and tagged Custer.
“It looks like the 42 got out of shape and then the 1 had a run and he didn’t hit the brakes hard enough and he hit the 42 and the 42 hit me,” Custer stated at the infield care center. “We just got collected in something and there’s not much we could do. We had a pretty good car and was just kind of riding at that point, but, I don’t know. We’ll go on to the next one.”
Taking the air off the car in front of you is a good way to pass someone at places like Atlanta. However, Custer is frustrated about the way people were racing each other in the early stages of the race.
“Everybody is just going to pack air on each other to try to get underneath each other. That’s a good way to pass, but everybody should be able to race good enough where we don’t wreck each other, especially early in the race. I don’t understand why we got wrecked.”
Custer was regulated with a 39th place finish. Next week, Custer heads to Las Vegas Motor Speedway pulling double duty in the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series and NASCAR XFINITY Series.