Crashes create chaos, take out Junior, Danica, Kenseth, others at Talladega

Rea White

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Crashes create chaos, take out Junior, Danica, Kenseth, others at Talladega image

Two cars flipped. Two massive crashes occurred. Other smaller crashes sent cars to the garage. There were bang-ups on pit road.

Sunday's NASCAR Sprint Cup race at Talladega Superspeedway brought drama and wreckage as the threat of a rain-shortened race combined with the pack racing noted on restrictor-plate tracks to create some of the worst crashes of the year.

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Of the 40 cars on the track, 33 were involved in a crash at some point in the race, according to Fox. Some crashed more than once.

It certainly says something about the race when drivers who were caught up in early crashes went on to finish in the top five.

Drivers and fans generally expect multicar crashes at Talladega. Same with the other restrictor-plate track, Daytona.

But Sunday brought a high level of scary-looking crashes to the track.

Chris Buescher's car rolled down the track.

Matt Kenseth's also flipped, landing on the inside retaining wall before rolling back onto its wheels. Danica Patrick took a hard shot into the wall in that crash, leading to an X-ray in the infield care center.

"I've hit the inside wall at a superspeedway I think maybe four times now and that one was the worst … I'm all about bumping and pushing and being close, but I think that when it hits people with a certain amount of momentum, it's a problem," she said.

Michael Annett took a hard hit as well. Dale Earnhardt Jr. crashed twice. Carl Edwards was in more than one crash, too, before finally having to retire for the day.

It's a testament to NASCAR's ability to keep up with safety advancements that all the drivers walked away from the crashes, though certainly many will be sore after the hits they took on Sunday. SAFER barriers, designed to reduce the crushing impact of cars hitting concrete walls, continue to save drivers from major injuries.

Not all, though, left the track with any level of contentment.

Kenseth had words for Logano after the race. They have a history, and Sunday wrote another chapter. In his comments after his crash, Kenseth said: "The first thing that happened is [Logano] ran me off the race track and that got us way behind, so I thought we were done with that but maybe we aren't."

Buescher admitted he was less than thrilled, too, but more with the racing at Talladega than anything else.

"It was so quick I never had any time to react," he said of his frightened crash. "We got clipped in the right rear and as soon as it turned it went up on its lid. I thought we were clear of the wreck. I saw it happening in front of us and checked up and the next thing I knew I was upside down. I am pretty sick and tired of speedway racing at this point. It has been a rough year for that."

The race even ended with cars crashing, including that of Kevin Harvick, who took a hard hit into the wall.

Kasey Kahne, caught up in an early crash, said things seemed aggressive from the start on Sunday. Blame it on the threat of rain, which never arrived.

"Guys were being aggressive and it felt like it was late in the race the whole race," he said. "That first run was as wide-open as I've had it. As I remember it in a while at times of the first run, probably three-quarters of that first run. It was pretty wild how all that went down, but we had a good car. It was going to be a strong race if we just stayed out of trouble."

After the race, Logano summed up the experience from a driver's viewpoint when asked about his late crash.

"I haven't seen a replay yet," he said. "We crashed. That is part of Talladega. Seventy-five percent of us crashed, I think.

"It is a bummer for us though. We were in position decent toward the end. I don't know. Something happened up top and cars came down across my nose. It is what it is."

Rea White