What happened
At Martinsville, Mason Maggio slid up at corner exit while racing alongside Garrett Smithley and squeezed him against the outside wall. Smithley hit the wall hard and clipped Maggio, who also struck the wall. Maggio then spun across the track into Patrick Emerling’s path during the O’Reilly Auto Parts Series race.
Smithley hit Maggio again as the crash developed. Emerling braked hard but slid into the accident as Maggio crashed down the backstretch, while Smithley also spun during the incident. Emerling struck Maggio’s car as it slid toward the inside wall.
What it cost
Maggio finished 36th in DGM Racing’s No. 91, with Smithley 35th and Emerling 37th. NASCAR listed all of them as out of the race, each with 161 completed laps. Against the scheduled 250 laps, that left Maggio 89 laps short of the race distance. The result earned Maggio 1 point.
What could have been done differently
Maggio needed to hold the inside lane through corner exit and leave Smithley a car’s width against the wall. The outside wall gave Smithley no extra lane to use when Maggio moved into his space.
To keep the tighter exit, Maggio should have eased the throttle and accepted the loss of acceleration while the cars remained alongside each other. Moving outward while the overlap remained exposed his own car to the wall and to contact from the car he was squeezing.