Kyle Petty refuses to place blame on lapped Todd Gilliland for causing historic crash at Talladega

Kyle Petty took major issue with multiple NASCAR Cup Series wheelmen blaming “The Big One” on Front Row Motorsports driver Todd Gilliland.

In his examination of the race, Petty tried to put a stop to the No. 38 car receiving blame for simply allowing the field to pass him on the high side. Gilliland was going a lap down due to a pit road speeding penalty, and the field caught him quick on the track, and as soon as he came into view, the gigantic wreck took place.

After watching the field run four-wide during the first stage, Petty is wondering how the field wasn’t able to pass Gilliland going double-file around the track. It’s something he certainly had an issue with afterwards.

“It’s Talladega, and people are saying it’s a great race. How do you say it’s a great race when 23 cars crash, and there’s only seven that make it back to the line on that lap? It’s not a great race when that happens,” Petty started. “Now, a couple of things. This is going to be a Kyle Petty rant. I’m just gonna go ahead and say it, Talladega should not be a fuel mileage race. From the time they said, ‘Gentlemen, start your engines,’ there’s guys that sit on pit road, ‘I’m not cranking my car. I’m not using gas right now,’ and they didn’t. They were saving fuel before the race even started.

“Now, we praise these guys as the greatest race car drivers in the world. They run three-wide, they run four-wide, and when we have the big wreck, they blame it on Todd Gilliland, because he’s a lapped car running on the bottom. They can’t run two-wide and pass a lapped car? When you’re four-wide, you’re the greatest driver in the world. When you’re two-wide, racing your butt off, I guess you don’t know how to drive. I don’t know what happened there. Don’t blame it on a lapped car at Talladega, there’s plenty of room. I don’t know what that’s all about.

“As I look at this race, it is phenomenal to look at how it played out and how things happened, but I’m gonna say this, Ricky Stenhouse ran up front from the very beginning. He had stage points, I think he finished second or third in the first segment of the race. The No. 6 car, Brad K, up front. They did it. They took control of the race. Some guys take control, some guys can’t. What I mean by that is, pre-race, those two guys interviews, they said, ‘Drop the flag. Let’s get it done. We’re headed out there.’ There were 23 cars in a wreck, and most of those guys said, ‘We’re just victims of circumstances out of our control.’ They already had a built-in excuse that they were gonna be sitting on the apron going into Turn 3. Not Ricky Stenhouse, and not Brad K. Congratulations to Ricky Stenhouse, another trophy.”

While some believed the YellaWood 500 was a great event for Talladega, Kyle Petty evidently wasn’t a fan, even if he gained a ton of respect for Ricky Stenhouse Jr. and Brad Keselowski. Moving forward, he believes drivers need to take more responsibly for “The Big One” over the weekend, as Todd Gilliland wasn’t at fault.