Nick Hoffman took home the win in Friday night’s preliminary feature at Deer Creek ahead of the Gopher 50 and while in victory lane he shared his point of view on what happened during a massive wreck in the opening laps of the race.

Following a restart on lap 3, Hoffman got to the inside of race leader Tyler Bruening coming out of turn 2. However, Bruening was able to pull ahead going down the back stretch. Hoffman then threw it going into turn 3. Bruening appeared ready to attempt a cross over coming out of turn 4, but was never able to attempt it as Hoffman slid up and across his nose. The contact turned Bruening’s car sideways across the track despite his best efforts to keep it facing forward.

Bruening initially collected Tim McCreadie, who was in third. McCreadie got completely turned around and collected Bobby Pierce who flipped over and came to rest on his roof. Also involved was Ethan Dotson, who had absolutely nowhere to go and plowed into McCreadie. Chad Simpson, Jake O’Neill, Dustin Sorenson, Tristan Chamberlain also had nowhere to go and piled into the wreck. Jake Timm avoided much of the wreck as he darted to the bottom of the track, but appeared to also suffer damage. Aaron Marrant also turned his car in an attempt to avoid the stack up, but became the last car part of it.

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It’s the big one at @deercreekspeed! pic.twitter.com/vdsG0VnDDs

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Following the wreck, Ethan Dotson told DirtVision’s Ashton Smyth, “I don’t know what the f**k they were doing on the first lap. I don’t know. We got a lot of junked race cars so kudos to them.”

Bobby Pierce simply wrote “Bad night” on X.

Bad night. https://t.co/oIrqm3Wzvm

— Bobby Pierce (@BobbyPierce32) July 5, 2025

On Facebook, Bruening wrote, “We had an amazing Infinity Racecar tonight…But unfortunately, an incident on lap two took us out for the remainder of the race. We will get this 16 put back together and be back better tomorrow.”

Tim McCreadie reacted saying, “Wrong place wrong time.” He also shared that his team was up until 4:12 am local time repairing the car.

As for Hoffman, in victory lane he told Ashton Smyth, “There ain’t much I can do to plead my case in this situation. So there ain’t much I can say. I just hate it for all the other guys that got tore up there. It really sucks. I’ll do whatever I can to make it better as far as help them guys try and fix their stuff up or whatever.”

Speaking specifically to slider, he said, “Yeah, that was a big slider there. I felt like it was a pretty late slider and felt like he could have lifted. But just one of those deals that he was turned down the hill to probably try and cross me and as soon as he got up underneath me it just turns you around like that in front of everybody. So it sucks. You don’t want to win them this way. This is probably the worst way to win them.”

“Our race car was good. Probably should have been a little more patient obviously,” he continued. “Obviously, Bobby [Pierce] goes from 6th to 3rd there right away and you line up beside him and felt like I got a good restart just had to throw a pretty big bomb there. It can go both ways. So I don’t know if anybody’s going to be on my side on this side. But just the way it goes.”

What do you make of Hoffman’s move and his comments in victory lane?

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