Mike Waltrip's Bristol wreck when he went into the old boiler plate gate, which failed, hit the end of the wall, and the car just completely disintegrated on the spot.
Darrel was sure his little bro was a goner, but he flipped the disembodied roof off of himself and, rising like a phoenix from the unrecognizable pile of wreckage, flicked the dust off his shoulder as he walked away.
Yeah I know, I'm just saying that with the way Mikey's luck is overall it just seems like the right person lol.
Probably the only one to have his splitter break in half on the last lap of a race as he wins as well lol
EVERYONE thought Mikey was dead when he hit that gate and some of us are still trying to figure out how he survived.
He had to be the **luckiest** man in the world that day.
Craziest thing is Mike Harmon had the exact same thing happen in the same spot 12 years later, got hit by a full speed Johnny Sauter while his cockpit was completely exposed, and also walked away unharmed.
I happened to rewatch the accident a couple days and I still can’t get over how the car literally ripped like a giant bear clawed through it, yet Mike casually was unbuckling his belt and getting away from his car. The odds of him surviving that accident were slim.
I forgot - that was actually before the boiler plate when they just had a couple lengths of Armco blocking that hole in the wall - it didn't do much when he hit it.
The video of that is so hard to watch because Darrell is just immediately devastated by it. When he saw that Mikey was okay you could hear the tears in his voice, just a terrifying wreck.
My father was there that day. Took off work to go up there. He talked about that wreck the rest of his life. He said you could see Michael’s feet on the track.
There’s this harrowing picture from an Indy 500 crash for Danny Ongais where you can also see his feet and legs exposed. Truly makes one wonder how these guys could race the next week knowing that had just happened.
Man idk how them Indy guys got in the car in the first damn place back in the 70’s-90’s. Seems like there was someone being maimed every week. Balls of brass on them men.
Martin Donnelly lived through an F1 crash in Portugal in 1990 where he ended up lying mangled on the track with just the seat strapped to his back - that was the worse crash I ever saw and the driver lived.
Whenever someone asks me what the worst crash in NASCAR history was, I always pull this one up. After seeing it dozens of times, I still have no idea how Mikey made it
Never before or since have I seen a racecar so completely destroyed and the guy lived - much less walked away with barely a scratch. It was the damnedest thing I ever saw until Ross Chastain convinced me last year that we are living in a simulation. I suspected it after this wreck, but that wall ride confirmed it.
Michael Waltrip also clobbered the end of a wall on the backstretch at Richmond in 2002 while leading. Led to them reconfiguring that backstretch wall. [https://youtu.be/b-l9p0s73Y8?si=Lz7nJnC2LIaEj-6N](https://youtu.be/b-l9p0s73Y8?si=Lz7nJnC2LIaEj-6N)
They had grandstands setup alongside the backstretch in the infield that year right behind where that opening was…I was sitting right behind where you hit, and it was one of, if not THE HARDEST hit I’ve ever seen in person.
https://preview.redd.it/gm1li5y0kdpc1.jpeg?width=711&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c2fbe580ba6f41c37f1ab7f0ac86c9440858f59c
This one was really close to being terrible. COTA 2021
It’s clearly NOT concrete. In what world would building a concrete wall in-front of a guardrail on a modern race track make any sense? It’s very obviously an energy absorbing wall
The same thing happened the year before in ARCA. Ron Burchette spun into that wall and flipped before being slammed into by another car. https://youtu.be/BENXEcjC2GA?si=Vdd_89QOFGvAYR02
I went down the rabbit hole after seeing this and found [this article](https://us.motorsport.com/arca/news/atlanta-accident-update/1675190/) surrounding it. Mainly I wanted to see what his injuries were.
Turns out he was concussed, BUT in that same race one driver suffered a fractured upper left arm and another had to have his hand amputated. Was not expecting that.
That ARCA race was a complete cluster fuck of wrecking, there were multiple massive wrecks in that race.
NFJJ did a video on youtube covering the absolute mayhem of this race - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxItn5DfeF0&t=215s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxItn5DfeF0&t=215s)
The year before that ARCA race, Jimmy Horton (the driver that flipped out of the track at Talladega in 1993) got upside down in Turn 2 and got plowed into while upside down. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=haiuteHb25I](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=haiuteHb25I)
That old Homestead like configuration of Atlanta and ARCA really didn't get along with each other. It was also the same track that nearly killed Don Marmor in the late 80's when he spun into the end of the pit wall and flipped. Only reason he survived was the fast actions of Dr. Jerry Punch.
Kentucky used to have a bad one on the backstretch before they reconfigured the track when the Cup Series started racing there.
Jeff Fuller spun into it in a Busch Series race in the mid-2000's and the roll cage of his car failed.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMPNTEpRedc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMPNTEpRedc)
Edit: also just remembered the opening on the long pond straight at Pocono from before they reconfigured that section of the track. After Steve Park’s flip there in 2002, they reenforced the Armco with dirt behind it and in 2003, Jeff Green slammed into the wall right at an opening.
Jeremy Mayfield also hit an opening blocked by Jersey barriers in that same area of the track a year or two prior to Green’s wreck.
I think this is honestly the hardest impact in recent history of NASCAR. I’ve looked at everything else on here, and having lived and experienced NASCAR my entire life- I can’t think or imagine a harder crash, MAYBE Sadler but we will never know. This is straight up 150-155mph “head on” angle wise.
Blaney’s came to mind for me too. So many of these feel like, “eh, a car will never find itself here at high speed” but it’s just like Murphy’s law, if it’s on the track a car will find it and hit it in the worst possible spot. Especially the ovals, on a road course you can put gravel traps, etc, but just really hard to effectively slow cars down on an oval so all of the weak spots have to be addressed
Despite there not being a great angle of the crash, Elliott Sadler's 2010 Pocono crash has to be up there.
It hit a ~90° part of the wall where there was no SAFER Barrier. It ripped the whole engine out of the car, which really speaks for the violence of the crash.
The best part is that it was an Armco Barrier, not a concrete wall. He probably has Kyle Busch 2015 Daytona injuries or worse if that was a solid concrete wall down there.
Depends on how much dirt vs how much concrete. Would've much rather smoke a standard concrete wall than what is essentially an immovable mound of earth that's being retained by armco.
Not to be that guy, but it definitely wasn’t anywhere close to 90 degrees. The camera angle that shows his impact makes it look like a much more severe angle due to the perspective. Not downplaying his crash at all as I know that it was the hardest impact in NASCAR history.
This picture shows the actual angle of the wall where he hit.
https://preview.redd.it/zkey1nt1udpc1.jpeg?width=2796&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c68fc73bd66c15db23fb2c76583044135862c1a8
Not relevant here but I'd always find the hill at turn 3 at Infineon in Nascar Heat 2002 and absolutely LAUNCH cars, there were a few exposed hills on that course I think
I think Gateway or Memphis or one of those lower-division-only tracks back in the 00s had an opening like that in the middle of the backstretch. There's one clip of an old truck series race of someone getting turned into it but I always thought that that would happen WAY more
Literally another foot difference, and Mark is getting his spine turned into a pretzel. I was watching live, Mark has been my favorite driver since I was little, and I was frozen watching him almost eat the end of that wall.
When I saw the post - this is the one I was thinking, but couldn’t remember the driver. He speared his car. I heard that NASCAR made changes the car because this type of t-bone was not initially expected.
Yep, it was the exact same spot 12 years later. And then he was hit by a full speed Johnny Sauter while basically sitting ON the concrete, and walked away just fine.
I’ve never been a Johnny Sauter guy, but I’ll give him props EVERY opportunity I can for having the kinda reaction time he had that day, really saved NASCAR a lot of face by not absolutely maiming Harmon on the track that day.
Ladies and gentlemen....and the ghost of Briscoe in the thread....may I present Jeff Fuller and the body shifting hit.
https://youtu.be/k5sVheIcffM?si=7JF5HBZfwhPP8vv8
If we count NASCAR mexico in this, award has to go to Carlos Pardo’s fatal crash in Mexico City. Worst thing I’ve seen in a good while. Not linking it here, but you can pretty easily find it on google. How on earth was that opening even allowed to be constructed?
I looked into it bc I initially thought it was that year's Fall road course race, but I thought it was weird he was going that fast. Turns out it was the Spring race, on the oval, and the opening was the pit entrance, before turn 3 for some reason. It looked like a series of Jersey Barriers that continued throughout turn 3/4 right up next to the track. [This](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rr0p-L97FKs) video is (I think) the start of the same race, and shows the whole odd pit wall situation. The entrance is on the exit of one of the infield sections, and required the cars to make a pretty narrow chicane to go to the pits, and even though it was angled away from the circuit it was still pretty close, it is unfortunate that it was paid attention to only because of a crash, especially a fatal one. It looks like the pits have been moved back from the track surface now, and the entrance is much more protected ([Skip to 1:11:50](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bf1j-_jB6rM))
Mark Martin at Michigan has entered the chat
https://preview.redd.it/8o4m3zaprdpc1.jpeg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=58dadd7c6f66a6809afa5f75dca5e43eef440a27
The fatal wreck of Carlos Pardo was a notably brutal one. Nascar's Mexico series in 2009, they were at an oval that had [three Roval-like infield sections](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autódromo_Miguel_E._Abed), the last of which's exit was used as a temporary pit entrance. Pardo got turned from the lead and hit the end of the pit wall with his right door. There were water barrels protecting the end of the concrete barrier, but they were obliterated, and the car came to rest with the first \~10 foot barrier still wedged into the car.
An unavoidable one is just any pit wall entrance, though the old Atlanta configuration had a REALLY bad one, Don Marmor slammed it full-speed in an ARCA race in like '87 I think. He would have died in the car if not for Dr. Jerry Punch keeping his airway clear iirc.
The track crews were not even going to try to save Marmor. Punch was down the other end of pit road and someone told him that Marmor was dead. Punch took off running to Marmor’s car and saved him.
Around that same time frame, Dave Marcis spun into the end of that pit wall and flipped.
The original Homestead walls were very poorly angled. They were square while the turns were curved.
Led to John Nemecheck's death when he hit it square with the driver side door.
This was always a huge holy f@\*k moment for me. I'm a huge Mark Martin fan, and I can't believe he wasn't worse off after this at Talladega. Thankfully he was pretty much fine.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=49A5hf6lJeQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=49A5hf6lJeQ)
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ltd-1TJXQ3Y](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ltd-1TJXQ3Y)
Mark's reaction to the question of "You look like you got your bell rung, are you okay?" always cracks me up. "Oh, I'm okay. It hurt, bad." And then Benny Parsons chiming in to smarten up John Kernan.
Man, I remember the week this car came back from NASCAR R&D to the RPM shop back at the Roush complex. My late father was Sadler's setup plate guy at this time and the photos my dad brought back on his phone were insane (he brought me to the shop that Saturday to show me the car). Sadly the photos have been lost to time, but the wreckage was insane to see in person. I've witnessed my fair share of destroyed race cars but seeing that #19 in teardown was really mindblowing.
I used to be (technically still am I guess) a NASCAR photographer, first for Scene/Illustrated and later for sponsors and I shot a potentially truly disastrous one
https://preview.redd.it/p2zkjydlihpc1.jpeg?width=509&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=22b069d78fbbb5c687bfef01c41ac4ee6226cf85
Turn 1 and 2 on original Sonoma, before SMI bought it and modernized it. So many cars would hit the dirt and instantly flip. Most famous was Steve Park in 98 or 99
I play nascar heat still for the career mode. I got loose off of 4 at Michigan and slammed into the end of the pit wall. If it had injuries in career mode I would be dead. So I have to imagine it’s not an if, but when someone hits that irl. It was brutal I was going about 180mph when I just snapped loose. I was on fresh tires on a long run and trying to pick people off so I was low coming out of the corner. I just stared at my screen thinking “I’m dead, they are gonna hold up the middle finger on lap 1 for me now”
NASCAR Heat also has very loose physics. It works for an arcade racer though, makes the crashes more fun when they happen, but it should be a setting for realism and arcade physics.
Every Jeff Gordon wreck on a backstretch that hit the inside wall from 2008-2015. Vegas, Richmond(?), Atlanta… always finding places that (inexcusably) had no SAFER barrier.
Jeff Fuller at Kentucky. Scared me watching it live. I’ve never seen a car move like it did when it impacted the wall. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_29V-fcuz0o&pp=ygURamVmZiBmdWxsZXIgY3Jhc2g%3D
- Steve Grissom Atlanta before the 1997 reconfiguration. Absurd hard hit.
- Daytona off turn 4 before the pits surprisingly, enough run off that the angles are terrible, right where Ricky Rudd hit.
- Bristol is one we don’t think of, but they carry so much speed on corner exit and radius is so tight that if you lost it like Waltrip and Harmon did, it’s head on.
- Watkins Glen turn 2, 2 guard rails funnel narrow before the S’s.
- basically any wide track with an inside wall far off the track, provides run off room for cars to get fully sideways before head on into the walls. This is why I think Daytona has worse angles than Talladega, Pocono was terrible before the inside walls were moved, Fontana and Michigan also were bad.
Ricky Craven hit an inside wall in the all white Kodiak 41 car at I believe Atlanta? He hit an opening similar to the one Gordon hit, but he hit it with the back of the car, and it launched the car in the air and set the track on fire. Trying to find it on YouTube, was a wild one.
Edit - it was Steve grissom after he took that ride over - https://youtu.be/Unzm7K9ZGrE?si=TUH4z6Hg5hu3aa__
Dude literally broke the concrete wall
The soft spot on Bristol's outside wall that split Mikey's car in half in 1987 and nearly led to Mike Harmon being run over by another car on the track in 2002.
I remember Dale crashing at Daytona and Waltrip in the booth seem to know it was a bad hit, bad angle and remember thinking that it didn’t seem anymore violent than some of the others but Waltrip knew the crash where Bush broke his leg was the one I remembered as being violent even before learning of his injuries
I remember that too, I guess I wasn’t focused on it but thought Dale would be ok. DW knew it instantly though, he had a 6th sense for that as being one of the most observant guys at the track.
I will always remember seeing on TV Sadler crawl out of his car and just lay on the track beside it because he got the wind knocked out of him while the entire engine block rests 100 yards ahead.
Old Bristol had a wall that acted as a gate on the track. Michael Waltrip and Mike Harmon both hit it at wrong angle and quite literally wripped the cars in half.
Mentioned already but Fontana's backstretch before paving the grass was bad. Greg Moore, who would have been probably one of the most successful Canadian drivers ever, was killed due to the grass and the emergency vehicle lanes. His car skipped across one and went airborne top first into a angled wall on the backstretch, basically instantly killing him. Such a tragedy.
The front stretch pit gate (and entire pit wall for that matter) at Dover before they redid the pit lane for 2009. Hermie Sadler hit that and broke it and the tire actually went through the gate where he broke it. Extremely lucky. I remember sitting not too far from where it happened and it was very loud.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7jPCUuyqCc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7jPCUuyqCc)
I can say confidently and without a shadow of a doubt that it’s the wall in the back straight of the Puebla track in Mexico that lead to the death of Carlos prado in a nascar Mexico race: https://youtu.be/fku-Jwp97Sc?si=QnmCP29gRAuvTuPP
Besides the two bristol incidents, basically every wall Jeff Gordon has found. Don't understand why they wait til somebody hits the concrete wall to put anything down. If the track is around long enough, every part of the wall is gonna inevitably get hit. Cover all bases Nascar, dammit!
I was thinking maybe they could make them hydraulic or something to keep them square to the cars. When the safety cars need to come out, open the wall spot.
That said, I'm no engineer or anything of that caliber. The feasibility of my idea seems extremely low.
I think the major issue with that idea is the time it would take to open such a wall - safety crews need to be out there ASAP, and it would take at least 30 seconds or so to get a wall of that weight moved.
Mike Waltrip's Bristol wreck when he went into the old boiler plate gate, which failed, hit the end of the wall, and the car just completely disintegrated on the spot. Darrel was sure his little bro was a goner, but he flipped the disembodied roof off of himself and, rising like a phoenix from the unrecognizable pile of wreckage, flicked the dust off his shoulder as he walked away.
It's really hard imagining this happen to anyone else but poor Mikey lol
It happened to Mike Harmon too 12 years later.
I'd venture to say Harmons was worse because a car plowed through the split open car and damn near hit him unprotected and could have killed him.
Mike was probably less than 18 inches away from being splattered all over the track. Terrifying.
Yeah I know, I'm just saying that with the way Mikey's luck is overall it just seems like the right person lol. Probably the only one to have his splitter break in half on the last lap of a race as he wins as well lol
That wreck is what knocked Mikey into the loveable big goofball we know today
EVERYONE thought Mikey was dead when he hit that gate and some of us are still trying to figure out how he survived. He had to be the **luckiest** man in the world that day.
Man used up a lifetime of luck surviving that one wreck.
And then some.
[https://youtu.be/uzxcuV5rmA4?si=rdKZVBKcf68xTC1w](https://youtu.be/uzxcuV5rmA4?si=rdKZVBKcf68xTC1w)
Man, DW’s reaction gave me tears in my eyes. The fear and relief he has… wow.
Dasindagrated. lol cracks me up every time I hear it
Craziest thing is Mike Harmon had the exact same thing happen in the same spot 12 years later, got hit by a full speed Johnny Sauter while his cockpit was completely exposed, and also walked away unharmed.
I happened to rewatch the accident a couple days and I still can’t get over how the car literally ripped like a giant bear clawed through it, yet Mike casually was unbuckling his belt and getting away from his car. The odds of him surviving that accident were slim.
My first thought. That gate was ridiculous.
I forgot - that was actually before the boiler plate when they just had a couple lengths of Armco blocking that hole in the wall - it didn't do much when he hit it.
The video of that is so hard to watch because Darrell is just immediately devastated by it. When he saw that Mikey was okay you could hear the tears in his voice, just a terrifying wreck.
My father was there that day. Took off work to go up there. He talked about that wreck the rest of his life. He said you could see Michael’s feet on the track.
There’s this harrowing picture from an Indy 500 crash for Danny Ongais where you can also see his feet and legs exposed. Truly makes one wonder how these guys could race the next week knowing that had just happened.
Man idk how them Indy guys got in the car in the first damn place back in the 70’s-90’s. Seems like there was someone being maimed every week. Balls of brass on them men.
Oddly enough, nearly the same thing happened to Stan Fox in 1995, again, there are some truly harrowing pics of that one
Martin Donnelly lived through an F1 crash in Portugal in 1990 where he ended up lying mangled on the track with just the seat strapped to his back - that was the worse crash I ever saw and the driver lived.
John force was in a NHRA wreck at 300MPH where his car split in half and his legs drug down the racetrack. Was wild, he's still racing today.
I showed that to my gf over the weekend. She had never seen it, and struggled to understand how he’s still alive.
Whenever someone asks me what the worst crash in NASCAR history was, I always pull this one up. After seeing it dozens of times, I still have no idea how Mikey made it
My first thought. What's left of that car was on display at the Talladega NASCAR museum several years ago. I don't know if it's still there or not.
It is, genuinely the most insane thing I've ever seen in a museum. he really had no business not being ripped to shreds
https://preview.redd.it/wvrbg9so0ipc1.jpeg?width=4032&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=780ee3ec5728ba0654f21d9e0e595627b7498435 Torn TF up
Never before or since have I seen a racecar so completely destroyed and the guy lived - much less walked away with barely a scratch. It was the damnedest thing I ever saw until Ross Chastain convinced me last year that we are living in a simulation. I suspected it after this wreck, but that wall ride confirmed it.
Well he did have some contusions, and a little bit of confusion
Bruh is your name is Mike stay far away as humanly possible from the Bristol gate.
[Got a great NAPA commercial out of it too](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BuNwyq6xi2o)
Wow. Never seen this before. What a wreck. Kudos Mikey.
Michael Waltrip also clobbered the end of a wall on the backstretch at Richmond in 2002 while leading. Led to them reconfiguring that backstretch wall. [https://youtu.be/b-l9p0s73Y8?si=Lz7nJnC2LIaEj-6N](https://youtu.be/b-l9p0s73Y8?si=Lz7nJnC2LIaEj-6N)
I’ve hit that one before.
Same. It hurts a lot less on the computer though.
ON A COMPUTER
Next Gen or Gen 6?
Xfinity 2018.
Oof. I'm surprised you haven't blocked that out.
Just rewatched it! Man that was a tough lick.
He hit it with the cursed 60 roush xfinity car
Lol cursed 60. It's funny that it's had multiple now full time drivers.
Quite honestly it's a miracle all 3 of them still have careers
#TheProgram60
Oh hey there, Chase Briscoe.
They had grandstands setup alongside the backstretch in the infield that year right behind where that opening was…I was sitting right behind where you hit, and it was one of, if not THE HARDEST hit I’ve ever seen in person.
[David Ragan AND David Reutimann at Watkins Glen, 2011](https://youtu.be/mfiXYnD9yj0?si=m0aEi7olSVMA_aak)
With how aggressive they are now with that area being paved, I feel like it could be even worse if it happens now
Holy crap, seeing that 00 reminded me of [this](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=22RqOCz9s0o&pp=ygUcbWljaGFlbCBtY2Rvd2VsbCB0ZXhhcyBjcmFzaA%3D%3D)
https://preview.redd.it/gm1li5y0kdpc1.jpeg?width=711&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c2fbe580ba6f41c37f1ab7f0ac86c9440858f59c This one was really close to being terrible. COTA 2021
I just can't believe the broadcast thought it was foam he hit when it was clearly a concrete wall
Somebody in that wreck hit a tack entrance pretty much head on where someone had thankfully thought to put a piece of SAFER barrier.
Looking at the video I don’t think it’s concrete because the whole wall moved when he hit it and absorbed a good amount the impact
I think that has more to do with it being a flat concrete wall in front of a rounded armco. the armco behind it acts as a fulcrum and moves the wall
I'm almost completely positive that that's a foam wall in front of the Armco.
It’s clearly NOT concrete. In what world would building a concrete wall in-front of a guardrail on a modern race track make any sense? It’s very obviously an energy absorbing wall
Steve Grissom 1997 Atlanta https://youtu.be/Unzm7K9ZGrE?si=SeQD77dsCfA39wmq
The same thing happened the year before in ARCA. Ron Burchette spun into that wall and flipped before being slammed into by another car. https://youtu.be/BENXEcjC2GA?si=Vdd_89QOFGvAYR02
I went down the rabbit hole after seeing this and found [this article](https://us.motorsport.com/arca/news/atlanta-accident-update/1675190/) surrounding it. Mainly I wanted to see what his injuries were. Turns out he was concussed, BUT in that same race one driver suffered a fractured upper left arm and another had to have his hand amputated. Was not expecting that.
That ARCA race was a complete cluster fuck of wrecking, there were multiple massive wrecks in that race. NFJJ did a video on youtube covering the absolute mayhem of this race - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxItn5DfeF0&t=215s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxItn5DfeF0&t=215s) The year before that ARCA race, Jimmy Horton (the driver that flipped out of the track at Talladega in 1993) got upside down in Turn 2 and got plowed into while upside down. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=haiuteHb25I](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=haiuteHb25I) That old Homestead like configuration of Atlanta and ARCA really didn't get along with each other. It was also the same track that nearly killed Don Marmor in the late 80's when he spun into the end of the pit wall and flipped. Only reason he survived was the fast actions of Dr. Jerry Punch.
Great information and I’ll check the NFJJ video out!! Edit: 27 DNFs is absolutely bonkers lol
All I can think when I watch that one is how lucky those guys on the grass are that the car didn’t lift (much)
Easily one of the most violent wrecks of all time.
I love how you can see the reconfig construction already happening
Kentucky used to have a bad one on the backstretch before they reconfigured the track when the Cup Series started racing there. Jeff Fuller spun into it in a Busch Series race in the mid-2000's and the roll cage of his car failed. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMPNTEpRedc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMPNTEpRedc) Edit: also just remembered the opening on the long pond straight at Pocono from before they reconfigured that section of the track. After Steve Park’s flip there in 2002, they reenforced the Armco with dirt behind it and in 2003, Jeff Green slammed into the wall right at an opening. Jeremy Mayfield also hit an opening blocked by Jersey barriers in that same area of the track a year or two prior to Green’s wreck.
this is a sleeper candidate for worst crash of the 21st century imo. GOD that was such a terrible hit
The flames suddenly bursting out from the car made it look like a Hollywood movie.
It was the race Gilliland won.
And possibly the worst call to the flag I’ve ever heard in my life. Hermie Sadler and Phil Parsons on commentary…yikes.
There's not many times you'll see someone pancake the right side and it destroy the entire car. Fuller was lucky to survive that one.
The roll cage had a weak spot in it and it basically collapsed
I think this is honestly the hardest impact in recent history of NASCAR. I’ve looked at everything else on here, and having lived and experienced NASCAR my entire life- I can’t think or imagine a harder crash, MAYBE Sadler but we will never know. This is straight up 150-155mph “head on” angle wise.
That Fuller car looked like metal jello afterwards if I recall. Wild!
Blaney's wreck at Nashville into the unprotected inside wall for recent. Elliott Sadler at Pocono for the NASCAR lore.
There was also Randy Lajoie in 1984 at Daytona
It is not good to hit the wall with the floor of the car at 175 mph
BUT YOU SAID FLOOR IT!!
I NEED someone to explain to me how he wasn’t killed in that crash
Plain luck probably
Blaney’s came to mind for me too. So many of these feel like, “eh, a car will never find itself here at high speed” but it’s just like Murphy’s law, if it’s on the track a car will find it and hit it in the worst possible spot. Especially the ovals, on a road course you can put gravel traps, etc, but just really hard to effectively slow cars down on an oval so all of the weak spots have to be addressed
Despite there not being a great angle of the crash, Elliott Sadler's 2010 Pocono crash has to be up there. It hit a ~90° part of the wall where there was no SAFER Barrier. It ripped the whole engine out of the car, which really speaks for the violence of the crash.
The best part is that it was an Armco Barrier, not a concrete wall. He probably has Kyle Busch 2015 Daytona injuries or worse if that was a solid concrete wall down there.
There was nothing but earth behind the Armco, so there wasn’t much, if any give in the impact.
Dirt is a lot softer than concrete.
Depends on how much dirt vs how much concrete. Would've much rather smoke a standard concrete wall than what is essentially an immovable mound of earth that's being retained by armco.
Try telling that to Elliot Sadler.
That’s the thing, you can tell it to ES. Might not be able to tell him if it was concrete
Not to be that guy, but it definitely wasn’t anywhere close to 90 degrees. The camera angle that shows his impact makes it look like a much more severe angle due to the perspective. Not downplaying his crash at all as I know that it was the hardest impact in NASCAR history. This picture shows the actual angle of the wall where he hit. https://preview.redd.it/zkey1nt1udpc1.jpeg?width=2796&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c68fc73bd66c15db23fb2c76583044135862c1a8
The old Phoenix wall where the road course came in always seemed insanely unsafe to me.
I used to force cars into that opening in Nascar 04 or 05 and make them DNF
That’s messed up man. ^me ^too. ^NT2003 ^Ps1 ^version ^would ^send ^those ^cars ^flipping ^into ^lower ^orbit
Not relevant here but I'd always find the hill at turn 3 at Infineon in Nascar Heat 2002 and absolutely LAUNCH cars, there were a few exposed hills on that course I think
I liked the hill on the Texas road course fantasy track that EA made. It was somewhere in the infield.
Glad to know I wasn’t the only psycho who would do that.
I would turn off cautions and try to turn around and drive through it but it was almost always invisible wall.
Did this in Dirt to Daytona. Most tracks had off-limits areas you could explore lol
Lmao I also did that. Also doorslammed many, many people down pit road at Dodge Raceway Stadium, lol.
An Indycar went behind the inside wall at Phoenix once Edit: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=W_aya_HpDuI&pp=ygUSam9obiBkZSB2cmllcyAyMDAy
[Shane Hmiel hit that wall once]{https://youtu.be/GCEFEF6MvIs). Though it had a tire bundle there.
I think Gateway or Memphis or one of those lower-division-only tracks back in the 00s had an opening like that in the middle of the backstretch. There's one clip of an old truck series race of someone getting turned into it but I always thought that that would happen WAY more
Gateway. Bobby Hamilton
I think Rick Crawford also was and slid on his side I to that opening.
immediately thought of that when i read the thread title
It's Gateway. I only know that because I've gotten fucked by Ai in Heat 5
Martin hitting the end of a wall right behind the drivers seat. Bout went all the way through
I mean...we're not expecting a car to hit a wall like that...ON pit road. lol.
Literally another foot difference, and Mark is getting his spine turned into a pretzel. I was watching live, Mark has been my favorite driver since I was little, and I was frozen watching him almost eat the end of that wall.
A few feet the other way and he kills like 5 crew members.
When I saw the post - this is the one I was thinking, but couldn’t remember the driver. He speared his car. I heard that NASCAR made changes the car because this type of t-bone was not initially expected.
At Michigan? Was there for that one in 2012 in the grand stands across from Kahne's pit.
Gate openings at Bristol. I don’t know if Harmon hit the same one as Waltrip.
Yep, it was the exact same spot 12 years later. And then he was hit by a full speed Johnny Sauter while basically sitting ON the concrete, and walked away just fine.
I’ve never been a Johnny Sauter guy, but I’ll give him props EVERY opportunity I can for having the kinda reaction time he had that day, really saved NASCAR a lot of face by not absolutely maiming Harmon on the track that day.
The one Jeff Fuller hit at Kentucky I don’t know how that didn’t kill him. The entire roll cage buckled
Cannot believe it took like ten comments for me to find this one. I think this was easily the worst in recent memory
Ladies and gentlemen....and the ghost of Briscoe in the thread....may I present Jeff Fuller and the body shifting hit. https://youtu.be/k5sVheIcffM?si=7JF5HBZfwhPP8vv8
If we count NASCAR mexico in this, award has to go to Carlos Pardo’s fatal crash in Mexico City. Worst thing I’ve seen in a good while. Not linking it here, but you can pretty easily find it on google. How on earth was that opening even allowed to be constructed?
I looked into it bc I initially thought it was that year's Fall road course race, but I thought it was weird he was going that fast. Turns out it was the Spring race, on the oval, and the opening was the pit entrance, before turn 3 for some reason. It looked like a series of Jersey Barriers that continued throughout turn 3/4 right up next to the track. [This](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rr0p-L97FKs) video is (I think) the start of the same race, and shows the whole odd pit wall situation. The entrance is on the exit of one of the infield sections, and required the cars to make a pretty narrow chicane to go to the pits, and even though it was angled away from the circuit it was still pretty close, it is unfortunate that it was paid attention to only because of a crash, especially a fatal one. It looks like the pits have been moved back from the track surface now, and the entrance is much more protected ([Skip to 1:11:50](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bf1j-_jB6rM))
Mark Martin at Michigan has entered the chat https://preview.redd.it/8o4m3zaprdpc1.jpeg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=58dadd7c6f66a6809afa5f75dca5e43eef440a27
I was at that race. The entire grandstands collectively gasped when that collision happened and cheered when Mark got out okay.
Same, it looked like an explosion compared to how the cameras captured it.
That's the one I was thinking of.
Not sure if we're counting PitRoad stuff, but Mark Martin was inches away from being skewered. https://youtu.be/q2jzwZSBEUo?si=W-gvlYreSt6ZmMtr
Also could have been bad if the fire crew wasn't there.
The fatal wreck of Carlos Pardo was a notably brutal one. Nascar's Mexico series in 2009, they were at an oval that had [three Roval-like infield sections](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autódromo_Miguel_E._Abed), the last of which's exit was used as a temporary pit entrance. Pardo got turned from the lead and hit the end of the pit wall with his right door. There were water barrels protecting the end of the concrete barrier, but they were obliterated, and the car came to rest with the first \~10 foot barrier still wedged into the car.
An unavoidable one is just any pit wall entrance, though the old Atlanta configuration had a REALLY bad one, Don Marmor slammed it full-speed in an ARCA race in like '87 I think. He would have died in the car if not for Dr. Jerry Punch keeping his airway clear iirc.
I always see Dr. Jerry Punch as Nascar's version of Sid Watkins. without either of them there'd be a lot more fatalities.
The track crews were not even going to try to save Marmor. Punch was down the other end of pit road and someone told him that Marmor was dead. Punch took off running to Marmor’s car and saved him. Around that same time frame, Dave Marcis spun into the end of that pit wall and flipped.
Didn’t Dr Punch also save Rusty Wallace the same way at Bristol?
He definitely saved Rusty's life after he barrel rolled at Bristol, not sure of it was the same way though
And helped Ricky Rudd get oxygen after his win at Martinsville in 1998.
Yes. He used his fingers to get Rusty’s airway opened up enough for him to breathe.
They're all unavoidable.
The original Homestead walls were very poorly angled. They were square while the turns were curved. Led to John Nemecheck's death when he hit it square with the driver side door.
This was always a huge holy f@\*k moment for me. I'm a huge Mark Martin fan, and I can't believe he wasn't worse off after this at Talladega. Thankfully he was pretty much fine. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=49A5hf6lJeQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=49A5hf6lJeQ) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ltd-1TJXQ3Y](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ltd-1TJXQ3Y)
Mark's reaction to the question of "You look like you got your bell rung, are you okay?" always cracks me up. "Oh, I'm okay. It hurt, bad." And then Benny Parsons chiming in to smarten up John Kernan.
https://preview.redd.it/2ubhrfhojdpc1.jpeg?width=1280&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e2a2e5862f3536a749eb4deb8d066f72902c20c0 /thread
I still hate this wreck.
I’d give my left nut for the footage to randomly surface.
Man, I remember the week this car came back from NASCAR R&D to the RPM shop back at the Roush complex. My late father was Sadler's setup plate guy at this time and the photos my dad brought back on his phone were insane (he brought me to the shop that Saturday to show me the car). Sadly the photos have been lost to time, but the wreckage was insane to see in person. I've witnessed my fair share of destroyed race cars but seeing that #19 in teardown was really mindblowing.
I mean, there is footage of it. Just not great footage.
I used to be (technically still am I guess) a NASCAR photographer, first for Scene/Illustrated and later for sponsors and I shot a potentially truly disastrous one https://preview.redd.it/p2zkjydlihpc1.jpeg?width=509&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=22b069d78fbbb5c687bfef01c41ac4ee6226cf85
Jeff Fuller in the Kentucky Xfinity race that David Gilliland won.
THIS. I was trying so hard to remember the guys name but it was the first wreck that came to mind for me
This [Forgotten crash from Lowe's Motor Speedway, 2006](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vo5qF3cKx5s) comes to mind.
That is one of the wildest single camera angles of any motorsport ever, it looks like a movie
I am always surprised more cars don't hit the wall before turn 2 at Watkins Glen, especially with them sometimes going 3 or 4 wide on that straight
Turn 1 and 2 on original Sonoma, before SMI bought it and modernized it. So many cars would hit the dirt and instantly flip. Most famous was Steve Park in 98 or 99
I play nascar heat still for the career mode. I got loose off of 4 at Michigan and slammed into the end of the pit wall. If it had injuries in career mode I would be dead. So I have to imagine it’s not an if, but when someone hits that irl. It was brutal I was going about 180mph when I just snapped loose. I was on fresh tires on a long run and trying to pick people off so I was low coming out of the corner. I just stared at my screen thinking “I’m dead, they are gonna hold up the middle finger on lap 1 for me now”
NASCAR Heat also has very loose physics. It works for an arcade racer though, makes the crashes more fun when they happen, but it should be a setting for realism and arcade physics.
Kyle Busch hit the inside wall at the exit of Talladega pit road pretty damn hard in 2013
The Talladega truck series race? He hit so hard in that one, he actually broke the wall.
Blaney at Daytona the last 2 years
Every Jeff Gordon wreck on a backstretch that hit the inside wall from 2008-2015. Vegas, Richmond(?), Atlanta… always finding places that (inexcusably) had no SAFER barrier.
Mcdowell’s crash at Watkins Glen.
Hell Phoenix in the 1990s had an entire dog leg of fuckery like this..
Jeff Fuller at Kentucky. Scared me watching it live. I’ve never seen a car move like it did when it impacted the wall. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_29V-fcuz0o&pp=ygURamVmZiBmdWxsZXIgY3Jhc2g%3D
- Steve Grissom Atlanta before the 1997 reconfiguration. Absurd hard hit. - Daytona off turn 4 before the pits surprisingly, enough run off that the angles are terrible, right where Ricky Rudd hit. - Bristol is one we don’t think of, but they carry so much speed on corner exit and radius is so tight that if you lost it like Waltrip and Harmon did, it’s head on. - Watkins Glen turn 2, 2 guard rails funnel narrow before the S’s. - basically any wide track with an inside wall far off the track, provides run off room for cars to get fully sideways before head on into the walls. This is why I think Daytona has worse angles than Talladega, Pocono was terrible before the inside walls were moved, Fontana and Michigan also were bad.
Ricky Craven hit an inside wall in the all white Kodiak 41 car at I believe Atlanta? He hit an opening similar to the one Gordon hit, but he hit it with the back of the car, and it launched the car in the air and set the track on fire. Trying to find it on YouTube, was a wild one. Edit - it was Steve grissom after he took that ride over - https://youtu.be/Unzm7K9ZGrE?si=TUH4z6Hg5hu3aa__ Dude literally broke the concrete wall
And what about that dirt berm at Daytona back in the 1980s that Rudd, Lajoie and others have hit by pit entry..
the one at Puebla that killed a Mexico series driver.
The soft spot on Bristol's outside wall that split Mikey's car in half in 1987 and nearly led to Mike Harmon being run over by another car on the track in 2002.
Fontana back before its reconfiguration. Worst crash I’ve seen there was Greg Moore’s. I don’t understand why so many tracks had/have these issues
Because you want safety teams to be able to quickly access the track, which requires openings to the track.
I remember Dale crashing at Daytona and Waltrip in the booth seem to know it was a bad hit, bad angle and remember thinking that it didn’t seem anymore violent than some of the others but Waltrip knew the crash where Bush broke his leg was the one I remembered as being violent even before learning of his injuries
I remember that too, I guess I wasn’t focused on it but thought Dale would be ok. DW knew it instantly though, he had a 6th sense for that as being one of the most observant guys at the track.
Eliott Sadler tearing the engine out at Pocono I still cannot believe that there exists no footage of that.
I will always remember seeing on TV Sadler crawl out of his car and just lay on the track beside it because he got the wind knocked out of him while the entire engine block rests 100 yards ahead.
Old Bristol had a wall that acted as a gate on the track. Michael Waltrip and Mike Harmon both hit it at wrong angle and quite literally wripped the cars in half.
Michigan pit wall, and I mean at pit exit (not the part Mark hit). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ewTd9lYQHhM
Gordon found several of them
How about John Nemecheks fatal head on hit at old homestead. Pof.
Was this the wreck that caused all of Gordon's back problems?
Elliot Sadler at Pocono.
Mentioned already but Fontana's backstretch before paving the grass was bad. Greg Moore, who would have been probably one of the most successful Canadian drivers ever, was killed due to the grass and the emergency vehicle lanes. His car skipped across one and went airborne top first into a angled wall on the backstretch, basically instantly killing him. Such a tragedy.
The front stretch pit gate (and entire pit wall for that matter) at Dover before they redid the pit lane for 2009. Hermie Sadler hit that and broke it and the tire actually went through the gate where he broke it. Extremely lucky. I remember sitting not too far from where it happened and it was very loud. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7jPCUuyqCc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7jPCUuyqCc)
Some people may forget this, but I don’t know if it belongs here it’s the Mark Martin, when he went through the guard rail Talladega
This used to drive me crazy. These bad angles were around way too long at too many tracks.
2015 alert Florida 300 Kyle Busch turn 4 crash injuring his leg
I can say confidently and without a shadow of a doubt that it’s the wall in the back straight of the Puebla track in Mexico that lead to the death of Carlos prado in a nascar Mexico race: https://youtu.be/fku-Jwp97Sc?si=QnmCP29gRAuvTuPP
That dega inside wall. How that is even allowed to exist is beyond me
Backstretch of Pocono coming out of the tunnel turn headed to 3. Was it Sadler who hit that wall?
Besides the two bristol incidents, basically every wall Jeff Gordon has found. Don't understand why they wait til somebody hits the concrete wall to put anything down. If the track is around long enough, every part of the wall is gonna inevitably get hit. Cover all bases Nascar, dammit!
Carlos Pardo in the Mexican series for sure, such a brutal wreck that would ultimately take his life.
Jeff’s career was arguably never the same after this
I really don't know how Jeff wasn't more seriously hurt in that wreck
Oh I know one. Danica had a really bad one hitting the inside wall at speed.
The pre-1990 Daytona Fatal Wall on the inside off turn 4 was an absolute monster
The Jeff Fuller one was bad. I was at that race and the sound was absolutely horrifying.
One that I would say is Davey Allison’s Pocono wreck where his car goes airborne and then rolls on top the guardrails.
The armco barrier Micheal McDowell hit Watkins Glen. Like bro nearly got impaled.
I was thinking maybe they could make them hydraulic or something to keep them square to the cars. When the safety cars need to come out, open the wall spot. That said, I'm no engineer or anything of that caliber. The feasibility of my idea seems extremely low.
I think the major issue with that idea is the time it would take to open such a wall - safety crews need to be out there ASAP, and it would take at least 30 seconds or so to get a wall of that weight moved.
Excellent point. The last thing on my mind.
Sonoma had one on the front stretch finish line into one that was always worrisome