NASCAR: Brutal Wreck, On-Track Brawl Highlight Truck Race

Christopher Bell won NASCAR’s Truck Series race on Saturday night but that’s not what NASCAR fans are going to be talking about Sunday morning.

After three red flags, nine cautions, and a fist fight for the freaking ages, Christopher Bell was finally able to hold off Ben Rhodes in the final laps of the Drivin’ For Lineman 200 and secured his first win of the Camping World Truck Series season at Gateway. The win will virtually net Bell a spot in The Chase and is a huge momentum booster heading into the off-week for The Truck Series.

While Bell might have been the biggest survivor of the night, leading for much of the final laps and holding off a slew of drivers to do so, other drivers were not so lucky at Gateway. In fact, Austin Wayne Self, Jordan Anderson, Jennifer Joe Cobb, Spencer Gallagher, Jon Wes Townley and Byron Williams all walked away with wrecked race cars and hurt feelings.

The insanity started with a three-truck accident that halted Saturday night’s Camping World Truck Series race at Gateway with just 40 laps to go. The race was already delayed several hours by rain earlier in the evening and even had its qualifying rained out Saturday afternoon, which forced NASCAR to set the field by points.

The incidents occurred shortly after a restart with 43 to go when Jordan Anderson and Austin Wayne Self made contact back in the pack, causing both drivers to spin and slide to the bottom of the track. While many other drivers were able to avoid the incident, Jennifer Joe Cobb wasn’t so lucky and clipped Self while his truck was sliding down the track.

NASCAR displayed the red flag shortly after the incident due to the massive amount of wreckage on the track and safety crews helped both Cobb and Wayne Self to the ambulance for a mandatory trip to the infield car center. Both Cobb and Self were later released from the car center with no reported injuries, but the hit by Cobb was cringe worthy to say the least.

Here is a video of the incident below. Let us know what you think and if any of the drivers involved could have done anything different in the situation!

The race then got even more interesting with only seven laps to go when Spencer Gallagher and Jon Wes Townley got into each other on the track and brought out the ninth caution of the evening. The two drivers then exited their cars to have words with each other, but that soon erupted into an all out fist fight with both drivers trading blows for a minutes before officials could stop them.

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Here is one video of the fight that shows Townley straight up hitting Gallagher with a DDT on the racing surface. Gallagher might have gotten a few punches in here and there on Townley, but that was largely overshadowed by the multiple times that Townley was able to take down Gallagher. The two were finally broken up and taken to separate ambulances after their squabble.

Byron got caught up in an accident on lap 150 when Tyler Reddick and John Hunter Nemecheck got into each other and collected several others in the front of the pack. Byron ended up finishing 17th Saturday night and now finds his two race winning streak broken heading into the next race at Kentucky. With that being said, he still showed a lot of poise throughout his first outing at Gateway.

Results For Drive In For Lineman 200 Brought To you by Altec

Christopher Bell
Ben Rhodes.
Daniel Hemric
Johnny Suater
Eric Jones.
John Hunter Nemecheck
German Quiroga Jr.
Kaz Grala
Ben Kennedy
Timothy Peters

The Camping World Truck Series will head to Kentucky Speedway in two weeks for their tenth race of the season.

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