MULTICAR CRASHES ARE NASCAR'S SPECIALTY.

There’s nothing in racing more brutal, or more shamefully entertaining, than a field-clearing wreck at a NASCAR oval. The recipe for disaster is simple: Start a race with a large field of cars, then run them at breakneck speeds with little breathing room. Voilà, vehicular mayhem.

- BY LALITA CHEMELLO

Talladega is synonymous with “the Big One,” even though tracks such as Daytona, Michigan, and Charlotte generate similar events. Given what happened in October 2024, when more than half the field collided in one for the books at Talladega’s YellaWood 500, the crash problem is only getting worse. A Round of 12 playoff race at one of the most notorious tracks on the calendar made for high stakes but a mostly clean race, initially. With six laps to go, NBC’s Leigh Diffey shared with viewers that the field had been racing continuously for over 45 minutes.

Just a lap later, a tornado of tire smoke and battered bodywork led to a red flag. The crash consumed 28 of the 38 cars on the track, making it the biggest Big One of the modern era by sheer numbers and the largest in the sport’s history by percentage of cars knocked out. The culprit was a chain of Fords running on the inside line of the track, with Brad Keselowski knocking the pack leader, Austin Cindric, sideways into the rear of Ricky Stenhouse Jr., sending Cindric down the middle of the field. Chaos ensued.