NASCAR drivers loses brakes ahead of high-speed entry to turn one
On Saturday, the NASCAR Xfinity Series unloaded in Elkhart Lake, WI. The 4.048-mile road course of Road America hosted the race.
Watch the Road America crash video below.
On lap 20 of 45, we saw a major crash. Chandler Smith lost brakes just ahead of turn one with racing Josh Berry for 16th.
Pieces of brake rotor were seen bouncing out from under the car. As it happened, Smith was traveling 170mph.
Instead of driving straight through the sand, Smith elected to turn left and scrape the wall and scrub speed.
As he went off into the grass, the car jumped into the air and slammed the wall.
The wall in that section is made of concrete blocks. It acted like a can opener, ripping the entire left side door off the car.
Smith was able to climb from his machine. The car was towed back to the garage.
The race at Road America is still underway.
Richmond / Road America TV Schedule
Chris Rice comments
“We had those brakes pretty hot on Chandler’s car,” Chris Rice of Kaulig Racing stated to NBC.
“It’s good that we build safe racecars. Cause that was something we don’t like to see at Kaulig Racing. Glad that Chandler got out.”
“It looked like we exploded a rotor. Maybe we had a bad rotor, maybe we had a bad batch of them.”
Rice added, “We can fix racecars. We can’t fix drivers, you know?”
Chandler Smith comments
“I was having some brake fade throughout the runs,” Chandler Smith stated after exiting the infield care center.
“But, I didn’t think that I was abusing them by any means that would make them fail on me. Going up the hill on the front stretch, I heard something snap in half. Then, I felt something come off of the car.”
“The whole front nose just dropped when that happened. I went to pump the brakes, there was nothing there.”
“I was just trying to scrub speed at that point. Don’t know if that was a smart thing or not to be honest. One could argue the sand would have stopped me softer.”
“Muscle memory, when you lose brakes, you want to try to scrub as much speed as you can. So, that’s what I tried to do.”
“I hate it for all my guys.”
Smith added, “It takes a lot of money to put it all back together.”
