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Kevin Harvick blames John Hunter Nemechek for 'violent' all-Toyota crash at Talladega
Stephanie Amador / USA TODAY NETWORK

Erik Jones was the most unfortunate driver from last weekend’s race at Talladega. He was involved in a wreck during a strategic drafting move by Toyota. The Legacy Motor Club driver was taken out in the incident that featured Bubba Wallace and Denny Hamlin . He was hospitalized after the crash and is set to miss this weekend’s race at Dover.

Ex-NASCAR Cup champion Kevin Harvick via his podcast broke down the “violent crash” of Erik Jones. While talking about he pointed out that Jones’ teammate John Hunter Namecheck played a significant role in the crash. He highlighted how the No:42 Toyota never lifted in the bumpy corner-3 and caused the incident.

Harvick claimed that Namecheck was very late to lift and this caused Jones to get launched into the wall after contact with Bubba Wallace. He pointed out that JHM shouldn’t have been pushing too hard at the moment and it made them get mis-aligned with bumps.

When you go into turn three, and you go over all those bumps, I think the cars kind of got out of shape, and they were all pushing and got misaligned. And I think, by the time you got three or four cars back in that group, I don’t think John Hunter [Nemechek] ever lifted. I think he just, I think he was so late to the lift party that you know, Erik Jones was the, kind of the one that got shot out of the cannon and wrecked, and then they bounced off the wall and collected Denny Hamlin. Kevin Harvick said via Happy Hour podcast.
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Kevin Harvick claims Toyota fooled everyone with the strategy

Harvick pointed out that pitting together and drafting that was a tactical masterclass from the TRD teams which fooled everyone. But unfortunately, the crash ruined the race for half of the Toyota driver on the day.

They had kind of fooled everybody on the strategy, and put themselves in a position to be really in control of the race. And you saw that play out for a couple of them, but the other, the other four or five of them, were wrecked running in a single file line. Kevin Harvick said.

Toyota’s day was saved with Tyler Reddick’s win, but if not for the that win the crash would’ve ruined the race for TRD. They need to clean their execution for any such strategy in the coming tow races at Dega and Daytona, if they want to score wins.

This article first appeared on FirstSportz and was syndicated with permission.

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