Andy Petree, the Richard Childress Racing vice president of competition, immediately felt bad for criticizing Sheldon Creed in public the way he did after the Xfinity Series race at Martinsville Speedway on Saturday night but now he feels extra remorseful.
There was a mechanical issue on the final corner that cost both Creed and teammate Austin Hill a spot in the championship race. In hindsight, both teammates were racing for the win and both needed nothing less than a victory to advance to the Xfinity Series final four, but only one of them could advance.
Both Hill and Creed door-slammed each other on the final lap. Creed had the advantage entering the final corner but washed up the track and slowed directly in front of Hill, resulting in a multi-car pile-up that led to Justin Allgaier winning his way into the final four.
Creed lost in a photo finish to Allgaier and Hill was collected in the melee.
Petree immediately walked over to Creed, who had just climbed out of his car, and publicly chided his driver for not racing Hill back to the line. Creed, who will leave for Joe Gibbs Racing at the end of the season, said that sort of response would not have been issued to Hill ‘if roles were reversed’ and that is part of why he is leaving Richard Childress Racing.
Creed said there is blatant favoritism towards Hill, whom had just announced a multi-year contract extension with Richard Childress Racing.
A couple of days after the fact, Petree said on FS1’s Race Hub, that he was wrong for how he handled the entire post-race scene.
“The racing you saw, it’s just Martinsville, right,” Petree said on a show in which he regular appears as a competition analyst. “It’s the last lap, the guys are trying to get in the Championship Race (and) they’re beating and banging.
“When it gets to (Turns) 3 and 4, you see (Creed) run up the track and then it looks like he just stops and I’m like ‘oh my god’ (because) it looked to me like a brake check that took both of our cars out of a chance to race for the championship.
“I was frustrated and probably should have handled it better after the race than I did. It’s never what you think you see, right, but as it turns out, they got together in (Turn) 3 and it bent the bumper bar on the Sheldon’s car and when he got down there, he couldn’t turn the car left.”
The bumper bar leaned against the right front tire.
“You see the tire smoke off it and that’s what drove him up the race track,” Petree said in real time while watching the replay. “That’s why you should really keep your mouth shut until you understand all the facts and that’s not what I did. I’m not real proud of how I handled that after the race.”
Petree said he has reached out twice to apologize to Creed, both before the discovery of the broken part and then again afterwards.
“I reached out to Sheldon … yeah, I’m old enough to know better, right,” Petree said. “I shouldn’t have done that. I did reach out to Sheldon and apologized to him even before I realized what had happened. I shouldn’t have done that regardless of the situation.
“The guys were putting it all out there, racing for their lives and a championship, and it’s kind of up to them to work it out. I just wished it had worked out in our favor.”
For his part, Childress called Creed the stupidest driver to ever driver one of his cars, and that comment was not addressed.
Matt Weaver is a Motorsports Insider for Sportsnaut. Follow him on Twitter.