Starr speaks on the crash for the first time via his podcast, explains he and Gragson talked after the race at Homestead-Miami Speedway
Saturday’s NASCAR Xfinity Series event ended in drama. Noah Gragson was leading at Homestead-Miami Speedway by 9 seconds with just 3 laps remaining.
That’s when it all went wrong. David Starr blew a tire ahead of the leader after he moved to the lower lane to make room for Gragson who was glued to the outside wall.
Starr then blew a tire. He went all the way up the banking and slammed the wall. Gragson drove right into the back of him. He went from leading the race to on the hook.
After the race, Noah Gragson said “dipshits” continue to mess up his finishes. David Starr’s car owner wasn’t please with the comment and later called Gragson a “talent lacking mouthpiece” on social media this week.
Related: David Starr’s car owner responds boldly to Noah Gragson
Since both of those comments, Gragson has further elaborated on the incident…
Noah Gragson on David Starr
“I don’t feel any differently,” Noah Gragson said via SiriusXM NASCAR Radio.
“I’m friends with drivers, car owners and people in that side of the garage, and I understand the battles that they’re going through. But I don’t feel any differently about what happeed.”
“I feel like in this form of motorsports, you should be able to feel a tire cording. You should be able to hear the cords unraveling with how bad that tire was. We corded a right front tire in the first stage.”
“It’s really hard to get your point across with uneducated people or ignorant people, so I’m just kind of over it at this point.”
NASCAR Cup Series drivers have been very vocal in the past about slow drivers filling the back of the field. However, that wasn’t really what happened with Gragson and Starr.
“I think there’s a lot of great drivers in the Xfinity Series, a majority of the field,” Gragson added.
He concluded, “You’re gonna have this – I don’t think it’s a problem. It’s just the nature of the beast. I mean, it’s – I don’t know. It sucks. I guess I’m just kind of flustered right now, with my opinion on it.
Running the wall
Gragson was glued to the wall for most of the night. It’s a lane that a few have mastered.
“The reason why I ran up against the wall is because the car has yaw in it,” Gragson detailed.
“The right rear of the car is closer to the wall than the right front, and the air traveling the right side of the nose, down the right side of the body, all that air has to go somewhere.”
“It pushes up in between the right rear of the car and the wall, and that allows for more stability. All that air, it really secures the car up and adds stability to the car and side force. When you run up there, it’s a lot more efficient, a lot quicker.”
“And saving fuel, when you go to the bottom, you almost have to park the car. When you’re running against the wall, you can keep your momentum up.”
“It’s like going to a stop light and hauling (butt) up to a red light and then stopping when you have to go again and re-accelerate from a lower minimum speed. It’s just wasting more fuel. You have to be in the throttle longer.”
“So there’s a couple different reasons why I was running up there. It’s always easy to be the Monday morning quarterback or the couch racer.”
David Starr says he and Noah Gragson spoke after the race
Starr has spoken on the crash for the first time. He stated that after the race, he and Gragson had a talk.
“I said, ‘Man, I sure in the heck didn’t want you to wreck,’” Starr recalled the conversation via his podcast.
“I didn’t want to wreck. It’s not often us small teams like Carl Long’s team — Our budgets are very small, and when you have chance to run in the top 15, it’s almost like a win for us.”
Starr was running 12th at the time of the blown tire.
Starr added, “To finish 12th or have an opportunity if somebody ran out of gas to finish in the top 10, that would’ve been big for us teams that are not your big powerhouse teams. It’s just racing and it’s just a shame that it turned out that way, but it does. It happens.”
Links
Noah Gragson | David Starr | Carl Long Motorsports | Homestead-Miami Speedway | NASCAR
