The outcome of the Advent Health 400 at Kansas Speedway on Sunday was decided, in part, due to Cody Ware spinning with just over a lap to go and setting-up overtime in which Tyler Reddick outdueled Kyle Larson, Denny Hamlin and Christopher Bell.
Hamlin led the most laps and had just retaken the lead from Reddick and was a quarter of a lap away from taking the white flag. Had the caution come out after the white flag, it would have ended the race.
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Instead, the incident set up bonus time, which propelled Reddick and the 23XI Racing No. 45 to their fifth victory in nine races to start the season.
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It was a tire failure that caused Ware to spin. While unfortunate, Ware was defended by both his spotter, Brent Wentz, and Rick Ware Racing competition director Tommy Baldwin for leaving him out on old tires when five laps down.
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For his part, Baldwin said on his Door, Bumper, Clear podcast on Monday that he should have made the executive decision to call his driver down pit road for tires just to be safer than sorry.
Instead, he was very remorseful the next day.
“I know Cody’s getting a lot of flack, but it’s my fault, right,” Baldwin said. “At the end of the day, it’s my fault. I mean, that’s what I get paid to do — not for him to make any mistakes. We were just beat down, man.
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“We run like shit all weekend. We unloaded like shit. We raced like shit. We took a waive around in the third stage to try to hopefully get a caution and go race again, and we were just deflated. We were all done.
“I’m taking the blame because I should have just gambled and lost. I should have some ‘come in, put tires on, and not make any mistakes and cause any problems,’ because man, it is an unwritten rule, in the garage area, that you do not want to change or be part of changing the outcome of the race. …
“You do not want to do that. It’s all about respect and I just hate it because I am on the plane sitting down and saying to myself, ‘I could have did one thing, come over the radio, and told Jerry (Kelley) let’s just take our medicine, take four tires, we’re already two seconds off the pace,’ and we could have done it.
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“We were just beat up man. I was just sitting there, I was done, and shame on me for losing focus on the whole thing. So yeah, I’m taking the blame to be honesty with you.”
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