TALLADEGA, Ala. (Oct. 15, 2017) – Erik Jones and the No. 77 5-hour ENERGY Toyota team were involved in a multi-car accident early on in the Alabama 500 at Talladega Superspeedway and the resulting damage left the team with a 36th-place finish.
Contact with the No. 1 of Jamie McMurray caused a chain reaction that gathered up two other cars in the Lap 26 melee on the 2.66-mile oval. The heavy front-end contact to the No. 77 Toyota damaged the oil pump to an extent that it was impossible to continue.
“It was kind of hard to see from my view,” said Jones. “I was behind the 18 (Kyle Busch) and he started checking up, he swerved off to the left and the 1 (Jamie McMurray) was sitting there really slow on the race track so I didn’t really have any choice. Unfortunately, I ran him over and kind of caused a chain reaction from there. It’s a bummer. We didn’t get to race today and I was hoping we’d just get a chance to go up and see what we had. It’s unfortunate, but those kind of things are going to happen here.”
The Furniture Row Racing driver is 19th in the NASCAR Cup Series after 31 races. He is 45 points behind Joey Logano in 17th.
The race winner was Brad Keselowski. Rounding out the top 10 were: Ryan Newman, Trevor Bayne, Joey Logano, Aric Almirola, Denny Hamlin, Dale Earnhardt Jr., Kasey Kahne, Gray Gaulding and David Ragan.
The race had 11 cautions for 47 laps and three red flags that totaled approximately 35 minutes. There were 30 lead changes among 16 drivers. There were only 14 cars running at the end of the race.
The next race is Sunday, Oct. 22 at Kansas Speedway.
