A lot of folks have not-so-great opinions of the driving style and talent of Roush Fenway Racing’s Ricky Stenhouse Jr.
The driver has become a lightning rod over the past few seasons, as he has been prone to making contact with others while trying to squeeze speed out of his at times under-performing race cars. Saturday night at Richmond Raceway, Stenhouse locked up the brakes while trying to get a lap back from race leader Martin Truex Jr. As a result, Stenhouse got into Truex’s No. 19 car and spun the leader of the race out.
Immediately fans jumped on social media to call out the driver of the No. 17 car for his bone-headed move.
Ultimately, Truex rebounded from the spin to win the race. So, in the end the incident ended up as no harm, no foul. But Stenhouse did not avoid the situation. The night of the race, Stenhouse took to Twitter to apologize to Truex and his fan base for nearly ruining their evening.
Stenhouse also took the blame for ruining what was shaping up to be a good run for his own No. 17 team as well.
First off, sorry to @MartinTruex_Jr and his fans. Didn’t anticipate locking the RF up and getting into him. Glad he was able to come back & still win. It killed our great run we had going inside the top 10. The team brought a great @FastenalRacing mustang. Hate i messed it up pic.twitter.com/lTxovsNp0T
— Ricky Stenhouse Jr. (@StenhouseJr) September 22, 2019
Regardless of how you feel about Stenhouse as a driver, this was an absolute classy move and it’s refreshing to see a driver at the top-level of NASCAR admit and apologize when they make an error, especially one the magnitude of spinning the race leader out.
One Response
Okay, thanks for this information. I already mentioned how it looked deliberate. Glad it got “excused”. This might be the only time I’m glad Truex won. Wouldn’t want him to lose a race due to something like that.