Herbst Dumps McDowell at Phoenix and Wrecks Himself in Stage One

The first caution at Phoenix on Sunday was a payback that wrecked the driver delivering it. On lap 44 of the Freeway Insurance 500, Riley Herbst and Michael McDowell rubbed doors off Turn 2, and entering Turn 3 Herbst drove into McDowell’s bumper and turned the No. 71 around, RacingNews reports. McDowell went backwards into the outside wall, bounced off it, and Herbst was collected in the wreck he had started. USA Today records it as the day’s first caution, with 17 laps left in Stage 1.

What exactly happened on lap 44?

The contact built over half a lap and finished in one corner. RacingNews reports the two rubbed doors off Turn 2 and again down the front stretch, with McDowell shoving back, before Herbst drove into the rear of the No. 71 in Turn 3. McDowell’s car was sent flying backwards into the turn, made hard contact with the outside wall, and came back off it into Herbst’s path. The booth read it the same way the video reads. “Looks like Riley is upset and just drives in,” Jeff Burton said on the USA Network broadcast, per RacingNews. “Turns him around but then wrecks himself.” MRN, on radio, said Herbst “harpooned” McDowell, USA Today reports.

Why did a door rub escalate this fast?

Because these two have a file. USA Today notes Herbst and McDowell got together in August at New Hampshire, and Herbst suffered a concussion in that incident which kept him out of the next race at Daytona. A driver who missed a race because of contact with the same opponent does not file a Turn 2 rub under hard racing. He files it under unfinished business, and at Phoenix the answer came within a lap. Neither man is in the Chase fight that frames this race, the seventh of ten, with Kyle Larson leading the standings: McDowell started eighth and Herbst 19th, per USA Today’s lineup, and both were racing in the pack when the day turned.

McDowell’s own recent history runs the other way, which is what makes the pairing so combustible. A week ago at Charlotte he traded hits with Ricky Stenhouse Jr. on the cool-down lap, a case that ended with NASCAR giving McDowell and Stenhouse no penalty and a planned meeting with officials at this Phoenix race. In Charlotte, McDowell was one of the drivers doing the hitting. At Phoenix he was the one sent backwards into the wall, in Stage 1, by a driver with a concussion in his recent past and a grievance to match.

What did the wreck do to the race?

It reset a race the front of the field had been controlling. Ryan Blaney, who started on pole and had led the opening 25 laps, was still leading when the caution flew, USA Today reports. Joey Logano took the restart, led the final nine laps of the stage and won Stage 1, and Christopher Bell cleared Logano early in Stage 2 to lead as the race settled again. The championship picture underneath it is tight enough that a mid-pack feud still matters to it: Bell arrived 51 points behind Larson, and last week he lost a Charlotte photo finish to his own team-mate, Chase Briscoe beating Bell by 0.029 seconds. A caution in a race like this is a points event for everyone except the two men in the wall.

How does NASCAR usually judge a dump like this?

By intent, damage and what the driver says afterwards, and usually after the race rather than during it. The Charlotte case is the freshest guide: officials reviewed the McDowell-Stenhouse contact for days, called it probably the closest case to a penalty without being one, and settled for a meeting. The factors that saved those two were that neither car hit the wall and no third car was damaged. Herbst’s case has the opposite shape: a car in the wall, hard, and the instigator wrecked by his own move. The garage’s running argument about where emotion ends and a penalty begins is the same one Christopher Bell joined last week, firing back at Kyle Larson over a power-steering claim, and the Denny Hamlin side of it surfaced at Las Vegas, where Hamlin said he would have defied a pit call had he known Larson was a lap down. Phoenix now gives officials the plainest version of the question they keep circling: contact everyone in the booth called deliberate, in the first stage, with a wall hit at the end of it.

What happens next?

The race finishes first, and this page will be updated in place with where both cars ended up after repairs and what either driver said. Then the file goes to NASCAR, whose answer in cases like this lands in the days after the race, and whose Charlotte ruling gives both a precedent and a warning. McDowell was due a meeting at this track about last week’s contact. After lap 44, Phoenix Raceway is now the venue for two conversations about the same driver in the same weekend, one as the accused and one as the victim, and Herbst has joined the list of drivers waiting to hear how the sport prices a dump that wrecked its own author.

Where did Herbst and McDowell finish? (Update, October 18)

Update, October 18: at the back, in the order the wreck arranged for them. Tyler Reddick won the Freeway Insurance 500, beating Ryan Blaney by 0.801 seconds over 312 laps, Athlon Sports reports, in a race that also wrecked the championship leader, Kyle Larson, whose 49 point lead fell to five after he was classified 34th in a late crash, and cost Denny Hamlin a lap and a 28th-place finish. Herbst, whose car was collected by the McDowell car he had just turned, was classified 32nd after repairs. McDowell, who hit the outside wall backwards, was 36th, ahead of only Austin Dillon in the 37-car field, per the published finishing order. Neither driver had commented publicly on the lap 44 contact in the coverage checked on Sunday night, and no NASCAR ruling had been reported. That ruling, and any comment, are the remaining updates on this page’s file, and they land in the days after a race, as the Charlotte case did last week.