Forum: HoseHeads Sprint Car General Forum (go)
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Juan Pablo Montoya's recent, unusual, wild crash with a jet dryer at Daytona got me thinking about weird things that have happened with open wheel race cars. The one that comes immediately to my mind is Sammy Swindell's bad crash at Lernerville Raceway in Western PA in which Sammy (at fairly high speed) ran into the back of a "push truck". If I'm not mistaken Sammy did severe damage to one or both of his hands.

Do any of you remember any other weird/wild, out of the ordinary open wheel situations??

Seen a water truck turn over about 10yrs ago, I can't remember exactly when or where though.

Johnny Rutherford, while driving the pace car at Texas, ran over the back of an IRL car several years ago.

That would have been Kevin Cogan, and although he was found guilty by the general public of causing the wreck by spinning the tires and losing control, it was in fact a broken Left Rear CV joint that caused this melee.

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No matter where you go, there you are.

Back when TNN was showing a bunch of WoO races, I remember Sammy getting knocked out of the Dash at the special-built Heartland Park track (on top of the drag strip). For whatever reason, after the green came back out he was pushed back onto the racing surface not under power.

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I just thought of another one but it didn't include an open wheel car--in the past couple of years at Knoxville Raceway as the water truck was working its way around the track, between turns 2 & 3 the water tank separated from the truck and the tank ended up on the track.

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I was being pushed off to start a feature when the push truck pushing a car in front of me got to far over to the right and ran over the car's right rear tire. It jumped the push truck high enough to crumple the right sideboard. Damaged the tow truck as well. Speaking of the Indy 500, was it Roberto Guerro that had the pole, then spun and crashed off the backstraight during warmup laps? I think this was early to mid 90s.

They almost had to call off the night of raicng that night. The tank separated and dumped the entire load of water on the bottom of the turn. Took a while to fix, but they were able to get the night of racing underway with a small delay.

Who can forget the slid for life stunt at the Chili Bowl years ago, probably in the early 90's. During intermission they spread a flamable liquid, probably diesel or kerosene down the front straight away for at least 50', then set it on fire and then with a new Mustang conv. they toed this idiot through the fire by a rope from the car as he was seated on a sled or something or maybe just his suit. The result of this brilliant stunt was that they caught the Mustang on fire but worse than that they

caught the idiot on fire and all the while this fluid was burning, it was giving off black smoke that filled the entire building up. All of this before the huge exhaust fans that they have today. It took what seemed like forever to clear the air. I believe the stuntman was injured but I don't remember the extent of those injuries. Does anyone else remember this? And if so, comment on your recollection of this event.

One of the weirdest things I ever saw happened at Manzy.

They actually finished the whole show before 10:30.

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No matter where you go, there you are.

during speedweek last year, i believe at Grandview? 2 water trucks crashed into each other

I can't say I've seen anything too crazy at the track that I remember, but there is the video on youtube, I'm sure most have seen, of Sammy hitting the back of a pushtruck at Lernerville. The video is listed as Sammy vs. the truck. I'd guess it was mid 90's by the Channellock paint job. At least the truck didn't have 200 gallons of jet fuel.

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I think a few years back at the Dirt Track at Lowes, two dirt packing cars were racing each other before the nights events. One car slid into the other one in Turn 4, crumpling the other car, and cutting the drivers legs off.

No one way back in the pits knew what was going on to cause all this delay, and then we saw a couple helicopters fly in. We were pissed when we thought they were holding up the whole show for a couple Dillon boys or Stewart. When we found out what really happened, we felt pretty bad.

Brandon McLain
United Sprint Car Series Driver
2014 Season
National Rookie of the Year!
National Points - 8th
Southern Points - 3rd
Asphalt Points - 3rd
18 Races, 3 Top 5's, 14 Top 10's

Billy Wilburn - Turn 1 @ Knoxville. Don't remember the year, but there is a youtube video I found & someone thought 2000.

years ago a drunk spectator got in a parked sprint car and signled a push truck to push him off. Got it started and crashed. That is story I was told. Track was at Knoxville

Unfortunately, it has happened more than once. The scariest thing I have seen is when a four wheeler will push off a sprint car and the four wheeler gets hooked on the sprint cars rear bumper. The fear for the driver of the four wheeler is very real.

2 that come to mind - late 70's at Tulsa Speedway, they turned on the green light for hot laps, but a push truck tried to cut across the track from the pit area to the infield. Car hit the push truck at full song, about 100mph probably. Nearly killed both of the drivers.... Darrill Brazeal (sp?) driving the race car, was never the same. He had just started driving for Lloyd K Stephens & OFIXCO. Not sure if he ever raced again......

Other one was at an ASCS Regional Race in Oberlin, KS. in 2004 or 2005. I was in the B main, starting on outside pole next to CJ Johnson. We came down the front stretch, got the green, and ran into turn 1, only to find Rick Salem (now URSS promoter) sitting on his 4 wheeler in the middle of the racetrack. Somehow we all managed to split him, no one even crashed. He said later he got his pant leg stuck in the chain or something......