Kenseth says tyre wall did more damage than cement in Sonoma crash
Matt Kenseth believes his violent NASCAR Sprint Cup crash at Sonoma would have been less damaging if he had hit a concrete barrier than a tyre wall
A tap from Dale Earnhardt Jr's Hendrick Chevrolet sent Kenseth's Joe Gibbs Toyota head-on into a single-layer tyre barrier during last Sunday's first road course round of the 2014 Cup season.
Kenseth reckons he might have been able to continue had he had a square hit against a cement wall.
"I didn't feel like I was going very fast and I'm like 'what's over there? Oh there's a tyre barrier, I hope I don't hit that very hard...'" he recounted.
"And it kind of grabbed hold of the car and whipped it around.
"I'm sure there's a lot of cases where tyre barriers are better. Unfortunately I don't think that was one of them.
"I think if I would have hit a cement wall it would have been a lot less damage and actually we would have got the car fixed and been able to finish the race.
"It just grabbed a hold of it and just destroyed that car. It ripped the front frames horns right off of it. It was definitely a surprise."
Earnhardt said causing the crash left him feeling "sick", but Kenseth classed it as a racing accident.
"I'm sure it was just a mistake," he said. "You're running side by side with those two-wide restarts, and you run two wide at a track that's really made to run single file. It's very small and a lot of marbles, and there's really only one good lane through there."
Kenseth initially said he was "surprised" not to have received a phone call from Earnhardt after the incident given their long-standing friendship.
After those comments from Kenseth were published in the American press, Earnhardt took to Twitter to announce that he had phoned his rival on Tuesday afternoon, joking "did I miss the deadline?"
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