The Tricky Triangle has already dished out its first casualty from the NASCAR Cup Series race. Noah Gragson from Stewart Haas Racing had to call it a day after he crashed his No. 10 Ford into the safer barrier on Lap 15.

Coming onto Turn 1, Gragson completely missed his marks and sent his race car spinning into the outside wall. His Mustang met with a heavy impact from the back, before being torn into pieces. Although the driver tried to fire his racecar back up, it just stalled after sustaining heavy damage.

It was a clear indication that the #10 team’s race was over, and the driver was just frustrated with himself. Apart from busting the back bumper, the impact also locked the steering wheel of Gragson’s race car, which forced him to call it a day.

“Sorry,” he said, via the team radio after a dismal end to his race at Pocono.

This incident brought out the first caution flag of the race. The likes of Denny Hamlin, Tyler Reddick, and Martin Truex Jr are looking really strong in the initial run. Just as expected, the Toyotas are pulling ahead in the lead. It will be interesting to see how the rest of the field responds.

Noah Gragson struggled with his race car throughout the weekend

When it was announced that Stewart Haas Racing would be closed after the 2024 season, one of the big concerns was regarding driver performance for the entire season. Knowing that the team was shutting down its operations, there wasn’t just the migration of drivers but entire crews. Right from engineers, road crews, and the pit crew.

This does affect how teams function, and with multiple openings, bright talents would always be on the rival team’s radar, leading to poaching. While it’s hard to pinpoint that SHR is going through this crisis right now but they certainly are having trouble providing suitable racing product for their drivers, and Gragson certainly bore the brunt of it.

“Well, we were pretty tight yesterday in practice and qualifying. So we made a pretty big wing at it to free up for today. Loosen up, and then I started to race out pretty loose. Being so early in the race, tried to make laps and get to the stage at the end of lap 30, and then we could work on it. Just trying to be patient, but just stepped out, and nothing I could do.” The SHR driver said this after an early exit from the race.

He did try to ride the initial stage 1 run being loose and was hoping to get his car back to the pit road to get the corrections in. But the Tricky Triangle’s challenging corners pushed him to the brink, which eventually led to the incident. “I felt pretty neutral through one and three, but that just made those corners loose. So just struggled here kind of all weekend with fine tuning the balance one side or the other between loose and tight, but nothing we could do about it,” he added.

There is a gap of almost 100 points between Noah Gragson and the 16th-place driver in the points standings. So, as far as his playoffs his chances are pretty slim, but hopefully, he’s able to showcase his talent in the No. 10 car in the upcoming races.