Stewart-Haas Racing’s Gen6 car inventory is being used up in Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series Goodyear 400 at Darlington Raceway. After a lap 7 crash, which ended the day for Aric Almirola, Cole Custer suffered basically the exact same fate on lap 97.
Custer was running his own race, when Anthony Alfredo’s No. 38 machine broke loose. Alfredo chased his car down the track and made contact with Custer. The contact off of turn two, sent Custer careening toward the inside wall. Custer slammed head-first into the wall, which lifted his wheels off the ground.
A HUGE hit for Cole Custer at Darlington. pic.twitter.com/SSTRlL7RfK
— FOX: NASCAR (@NASCARONFOX) May 9, 2021
When the No. 41 skidded to a halt, Custer’s day was done. Luckily, he was able to walk away from the carnage.
Following a check up at the infield care center, Custer said he simply had nowhere to go when things got crazy ahead of him.
“They all checked up in front of me and just turned down into me. I didn’t have anywhere to go,” Custer explained. “It is really frustrating. We wanted to give Margaret Haas a really good run in our Mother’s Day car. It just didn’t work out for us. We will move on to the next one. We were really looking forward to this race but it didn’t go in our favor. It is so slick out there. It is pretty crazy. Really slick. That is the slickest I have ever seen Darlington. We were just struggling. We couldn’t really find the balance on the car.”
Custer has had a rough season, scoring only one top-10 through the season’s first 12 races. Incredibly, Custer had not recorded a DNF in the 2021 season until Sunday at Darlington.
