A multi-car crash on Lap 47 of the NASCAR Great American Getaway 400 at Pocono Raceway collected nine cars and significantly damaged the playoff hopes of several drivers around the Chase bubble. The incident prompted the fourth caution of the afternoon and sparked a fan debate over who was responsible.
It began as Josh Berry’s No. 21 Wood Brothers Racing Ford made contact with the outside wall exiting Turn 3. Berry was running three-wide alongside Shane van Gisbergen’s No. 97 Trackhouse Chevrolet, with Austin Hill on the inside creating a three-wide situation that left no room to give entering the final corner.
Thanks for the submission!
Hill’s presence on the bottom forced SVG into Berry, who had nowhere to go on the outside and hit the wall. The contact sent Berry across the track, collecting Noah Gragson and Joey Logano, the No. 22 Team Penske Ford, then spun and clipped the left rear of Bubba Wallace’s No. 23 23XI Racing Toyota.
Wallace got turned around, and with no room to maneuver, Brad Keselowski’s No. 6 RFK Racing Ford drove into the side of Wallace, causing race-ending damage to the front of the Ford. Other cars involved included Connor Zilisch and Christopher Bell’s No. 20, which also brushed the outside wall in the incident.
NASCAR posted the crash on X with the caption:
“Not a lot of room to go three-wide exiting Turn 3. Josh Berry makes contact with the wall, and multiple cars are collected.”
NASCAR fan reaction came immediately. The dominant sentiment pointed directly at Austin Hill for creating the three-wide situation on the inside that compressed the group entering the corner. One fan wrote on X:
“Common Austin Hill disasterclass.”
Others piled on in the same direction.
“Hill drives like a special needs student,” wrote another.
“Austin Hill’s fault,” said yet another.
“TERRORIST HILL JUST WRECKED MY MAN SVG,” added one fan.
The argument centered on the left lane that Hill occupied. In a three-wide situation exiting a corner, where there is no margin for error, the driver on the bottom creates the compression that removes the room on the outside. Not everyone agreed. One fan pushed back:
“I’m actually defending Austin Hill on this one; nothing he did wrong.”
Another fan pointed at SVG’s contact with Berry rather than the stack-up below:
“21 hits the wall, nah. More like, the guy with the best command over the pedals in the series forgot which pedal was gas and which one was brake. 97 fenced the 21. Call it like it is.”
Brad Keselowski was the only driver to suffer a DNF from the incident, going behind the wall with race-ending damage on Lap 53. Noah Gragson also went to the garage. Shane van Gisbergen, Joey Logano, and Josh Berry all stayed on track but were running laps down. Gragson returned to the track but was over 50 laps down at that point.
Brad Keselowski reacts to his NASCAR Cup crash at Pocono with three words
Brad Keselowski offered a blunt summary of what led to the crash when he emerged from the infield care center. Asked about the NASCAR Cup drivers around him, he said:
“Just bad drivers.”
The RFK Racing driver then expanded on his read of how NASCAR races like this unfold at Pocono and why they cost teams like his so much.
“I thought we had decent pace and just trying to bide our time. The race was going to crack open in different strategies. These guys run really stupid races where they’re like three wide on Lap 5 in a race where strategy is going to re-shuffle the field three more times. So we were just trying not to get caught up in their junk, and I missed the first wave of the junk, but not the second,” he told NASCAR.com.
It is Keselowski’s third consecutive DNF in the last three NASCAR Cup races after completing the first 13 races of the 2026 season without one. The timing is damaging. He entered Pocono still in the playoff conversation, but these early exits have compounded the points deficit with ten races left before the chase.
Edited by Anurup Chakraborty