Crash occurred during a battle for second between Austin Hill and Michael McDowell
NASCAR is at Watkins Glen this weekend, and Saturday’s Xfinity Series Race ended up taking a little longer than expected thanks to a massive pile-up.
On lap 74 of 82, Connor Zilisch in the No. 88 for JR Motorsports was in the lead, but just behind him, there was a pretty intense battle for second place between Austin Hill in the No. 21 for Richard Childress Racing and Cup Series regular Michael McDowell in the No. 11 for Kaulig Racing. This was McDowell’s first start in the Xfinity Series since 2016.
As the field went through Turn 5, McDowell was in second place, but as they entered one of the narrowest portions of the entire circuit, Hill appeared to hook McDowell, which sent the No. 11 hard into the barrier and led to a massive pileup as cars behind were unable to see or react in time to avoid getting caught up in the crash.
That ruined a lot of afternoons with well over a dozen cars getting caught up in it, which effectively turned that stretch of track into a parking lot.
As you might expect, the race was red-flagged as crews took drivers to the infield care center, fixed barriers, and removed stricken cars.
There was some controversy over that crash, and that’s because the driver responsible for the hook that started the entire crash was Hill. Saturday marked his first race back after serving a one-race suspension for intentionally crashing Aric Almirola last month at Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
As I said, intentional or not, this was probably the day to race squeaky clean if possible.
In the end, Zilisch won the race, but there was another scary moment after the race as Zilisch fell getting out of his car. The CW Broadcast reported that he was taken to the infield care center on a backboard, but was speaking to emergency personnel.
He was also reported to have sat up once in the ambulance.
A scary scene for sure, and hopefully, Connor is okay.
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