Jeff Gordon, Sam Hornish Jr. and Jeff Burton escaped injuries in wild crash Monday at the Glen
Sam Hornish Jr. had a spectacular crash but walked away unhurt (Photo: Getty Images for NASCAR)
By Mike Mulhern
mikemulhern.net
(Developing)
WATKINS GLEN, N.Y.
Jeff Gordon, Sam Hornish Jr., and Jeff Burton all walked away, albeit shaken and bruised, from one of the most vicious crashes of the summer, which destroyed their cars late in Monday's Sprint Cup 220.
"I got loose. Sorry, that's my fault. I just got loose," Kahne said of the incident, which occurred coming out of the horseshoe end of the track (which is at the end of the backstretch).
Kahne and Hornish were side-by-side through that turn, Kahne on the inside.
Hornish wound up pushed off the outside of the track, onto the small grassy area and into a tire wall. Hornish's car bounced out of the tires and into the middle of the track, amid heavy traffic. Gordon plowed into Hornish, whose car spun wildly and was then hit very hard by Burton.
"It's just been one of those years….I'm too old for this," Burton said after his third crash in five weeks.
"When I saw Sam going out (into the tire barrier) I knew he was coming back on the track, but there was nothing I could do. We saw the same situation in the Nationwide race"
"Kasey got loose and had to correct, and got me sideways," Hornish said. "Pretty big hit, but these cars are pretty safe. Couple bumps and bruises….."
Complicating the medical issue for Gordon is his already painful back. "We went through this at Dover too," Gordon says after leaving the infield hospital. "If we were going straight to Bristol, it might be an issue, but Michigan (next Sunday's stop) is pretty easy.
"It was a heavy impact. I knew when he hit the tire barrier he would ricocheted off. I just hoped I could get by him before that happened.
"It was just one of those days. Wrong place, wrong time."
Gordon was never in the hunt all day, running deep in the pack with handling problems.
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I hope no one ever again
I hope no one ever again whines about "The Big One" on the plate tracks, because this is worse than anything we see at those places. And we've seen plenty of others about as bad on road courses.
believe me, it is a disgrace
believe me, it is a disgrace that the france family's isc hasn't upgraded this place with some soft wall. whenever i see those tire barriers, circa 1970, i think nascar's push about 'safety' is highly overrated. and i don't care about the 'boot' and all that, there is no excuse for Hornish's crash today or Lefler's crash on Friday. move the wall, put in some gravel pits. we don't need to kill anybody. i want juan pablo montoya and jeff gordon to go to sonoma and the glen and tell the track owners how to improve those tracks....you'd think jeff, after today's incident, might want to say something to jim france and brian france and lesa france kennedy about things.....or maybe even roger penske.....
Mike, this is part of why I
Mike, this is part of why I hate - hate - road racing. The courses are always built to be narrow, no matter where they are. Sears Point, Road America, Riverside, Portland, Mid-Ohio - I can't find a road course out there that isn't narrow and thus doesn't have these bottleneck areas that close up fast in a crash and suddenly a bunch of cars get into it. I'm not sure a SAFER barrier would have helped in Hornish's wreck because the way all road courses are built, bottleneck crashes always seem to happen.
And inserting the IRL discussions that have been on your site, it's worse on street circuits, so why IRL would want to race so often on such tracks is baffling. NASCAR wisely has avoided racing on a street circuit.
Even when the cars don't wreck, the racing on road courses is absolutely awful - passing is almost impossible and restarts are always far worse than on ovals because everyone's shoving the car into holes that aren't there and somebody always gets turned - contrast this with Pocono the previous week when the leaders got seven abreast and could do it clean.
I've always advocated they take the road courses out of NASCAR altogether - Rootin' Tootin' Bruton can put a 500-miler at Kentucky Speedway into Sears Point's slot and Kansas can get that second date they want from Watkins Glen. ALMS etc. can have Sears Point and Watkins Glen.
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yes -- i agree the road
yes -- i agree the road courses are too narrow. so widen them in spots. at sonoma i'd do something about that parking lot corner -- turn it into a riverside turn nine....and i'd do the same with that corner at the end of the backstretch at the glen. why not ask JPM and Jeff Gordon and Tony Stewart to come up with a few ideas....