Tempers flared between Lee Faulk Racing and Justin Crider’s team following the conclusion of Saturday night’s Championship Auto Racing Series (CARS) Late Model Stock Car race at Myrtle Beach Speedway.
The incident was fallout from an on-track incident in which Kate Dallenbach, who was racing a Late Model for Lee Faulk Racing, was spun on the initial white flag lap by Roddey Sterling, Jr. Under the caution, according to Justin Crider, Dallenbach made contact with Crider’s car. Following the race, Crider went over to the Lee Faulk Racing team to discuss the incident and things got heated as Lee Faulk repeatedly demanded Crider and his team leave their pit stall.
“Whenever her and the Moon Pie kid (Sterling), they got together off of two, they caused that caution,” Crider remarked. “She hits me under caution right in my door. Tears it up right before the Martinsville test. This is my only car. I went over there calmly to ask her or ask Lee [Faulk] if she knew that it wasn’t my fault. He starts running his mouth, being all fired up for no reason.”
The pit road skirmish was all verbal. Representatives from both teams expressed their displeasure while Lee Faulk demanded the Criders leave their pit area.
“I had a nice conversation with Michael, his son, then [Lee] comes up and smacking my hands around and yelling at me for no reason,” Crider continued. “I don’t have any part in that. Some words were exchanged but Michael came over here a little bit ago and apologized. I’m just waiting for Lee to realize if he was out of line. I feel like Kate needs to explain her side, but it’s just racing.”
Michael Faulk said that the Faulk team asked to talk to Crider about the incident later because the team was already angry about the incident that took place with Sterling.
“So basically, what happened was, Kate got turned around by the 59 with three to go,” Michael Faulk said. “Pretty much ruined our night so, as you can imagine, everybody was pretty pissed off here after the race. Justin came down to voice his displeasure with Kate for getting into him under caution and we just asked, ‘can we talk about this later?’ and basically leave our pit, everybody’s pissed off, nothing good is going to come out of this. They just kept going on and on and on and it got a little bit out of hand but everything’s fine.”
The race was Dallenbach’s first race in the CARS Tour and the incident with Sterling, which set up a green-white-checkered finish, derailed a strong run for the 18-year-old.
“She did great for her first CARS race,” Faulk commented. “We only had limited time here. I thought she did real good. She’s raced with some of the best guys in the country so I’m real proud of how she did.”
The incident with Dallenbach was the latest in a series of unfortunate events for Justin Crider. Crider had a strong start to the season and looked to be a points contender early, but in the last three races, he has been involved in two crashes and been sidelined by mechanical problems. Crider has failed to finish inside the top-10 since his third place finish at Hickory Motor Speedway back in May.
Sterling, who apparently triggered the incident that sent Dallenbach around, was swept up in an accident during the green-white-checkered finish with Jeff Oakley and Haley Moody who was also making her CARS Tour debut.
