With NASCAR's awards banquet on Friday, Dec. 5 (stop by for the live blog!), here's a look at 10 from '08 -- 10 of the NASCAR season's best moments.
With 43 cars on track, it's not too often that TV cameras catch a wreck live for the audience at home, but June's Sprint Cup race at Dover International Speedway was a little different.FOX Sports was riding along with Elliott Sadler in his No. 19 Dodge on the in-car camera when the car suddenly broke loose and slapped the outside Turn 2 wall. What we saw next was also atypical of crashes at Dover.
Instead of following the general rule that Dover is a "self-cleaning" race track that forces crashed cars to the bottom of the race track because of the banked corners and straightaways, Sadler's car opted to slide precariously into the middle of the track and into what is best described as a blind spot for race cars traveling at speed.
And so, as the video below shows, Tony Stewart slammed into Sadler, followed by Denny Hamlin, Scott Riggs, Kevin Harvick, Dale Earnhardt Jr., and Bobby Labonte to leave the track virtually blocked and multiple pre-race favorites done for the day after just 19 laps of the 400-lap race.
FOX's Darrell Waltrip said "The 15 done a whale of a job," of getting through the wreck, and he surely did. The No. 15 is Paul Menard in the bright yellow car and as you can watch below, he comes out of Turn 2, sees the track blocked, cuts left around a slowing Earnhardt Jr. to slightly brush the wall with the rear of his car and keeps going around the wreck.
From my point of view, this whole crash started thanks to Sadler coming down across the nose of David Gilliland's No. 38 -- a common mistake at that point on track at DIS because the view of the spotters is somewhat limited.
NASCAR's summer king Kyle Busch wound up winning the 400-miler after just four more cautions, none even remotely close to the melee that took place off turn 2. Now, enjoy the clip:
Comments (Page 1 of 1)
i do not think that elliott sadler should be replaced by anyone. where is the 10 car and the 43 that bobby labonte will not be in next year? ray everham needs to back his cars and work with them better! i am a kasey kahne fan following bill elliott for over 22 years and really thought everham would help keep his cars do alobetter ray wake up and keep going what bill elliott helped you start good luck and as long as u support your end i will stay with your teams u did it for gordan what happened to you now? kasey is just as r better than your other driver. make it work this year if not i hope kasey and elliott go back to fords!