Jimmie Johnson has not had a good run at Kentucky Speedway this weekend.
In Saturday night’s NASCAR Sprint Cup race, Johnson spun and hit the wall just 33 laps into the Quaker State 400. Johnson had been running sixth on a restart following the competition caution on Lap 25.
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Johnson got loose and slid into the outer wall on the newly repaved track. The drivers are also racing with a lower downforce package for the second time this season; it debuted for the June 12 race at Michigan International Speedway.
⚠️⚠️⚠️ - @JimmieJohnson heads straight to the garage after going into the wall. @KySpeedway is tough, man. #QS400 pic.twitter.com/BB33ohRLeE
— NASCAR on NBCSN (@NASCARonNBC) July 10, 2016
The six-time champion immediately took his car to the garage for the crew to make repairs to the heavy left-side damage. He had finished in the top 10 in each of his previous five races at the 1.5-mile speedway with a top finish of third.
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Johnson was racing in a backup car after crashing in practice earlier this week.
Joey Logano also crashed a short time later.
OUCH - Ride along with Joey Logano #NASCARonNBCSN https://t.co/lH9MdIumEi
— NASCAR on NBCSN (@NASCARonNBC) July 10, 2016
Logano said that he had gotten loose about 10 laps earlier.
"You’re trying to slow down a lot and the brakes started going away and I don’t know what happened after that, if a rotor blew up or what made the tire go down, but the right-front went flat and I was pretty much along for the ride after that," he said. "I hit a ton, so I’m pretty impressed by the way the safety is in these race cars. That was one of the hardest hits I’ve had in a while. I had a long time to look at the wall before I hit it and not really slow down much before I got there and I’m all right, so it’s pretty cool to get through that. It just kind of stinks for our race team to be crashed out so early in the race, but we’ll just go back to Loudon and go back to work.”