Elliott Sadler Crash

NASCAR Driver Elliott Sadler Crash

The big NASCAR race this weekend in Pocono was plagued by a bit of rain. The delay was brief but once the racers were on the track, everything seemed to be going as planned. The worst part about the high speeds and raceways is the fact that accidents do happen. However, the Elliott Sadler crash on Sunday was nothing short of amazing.

The Sprint Cup driver slid sideway down a straightway and managed to hit the steel guardrail head-on. The bottom line for most racers boils down to the fact that a straightaway should not be the place for a vicious head first crash. However, this is the second big accident on the Pocono track this year. Pocono officials have indicated that changes would be made to make the track safer and obviously, the Elliot Sadler crash is just verification that indeed, something has to be done.

NASCAR racing is dangerous even in the safest of situations. Big name drivers have suffered at the hands of NASCAR crashes but race officials hope to make changes for the better soon. At Pocono, the safety is about the barriers which actually don’t contain a lot of catch fencing. Instead, just looking at the Elliot Sadler crash, it’s obvious that the old steel guardrails should be replaced sooner than later.

After a notable wreck in the June NASCAR race, Pocono was already planning to make safety improvements for next year's races. However, they couldn't be implemented for this year's Pennsylvania 500, and the Elliott Sadler crash showed how costly that could have been.

The Pennsylvania 500 was already contending with bad weather late in the race. On lap 165, Jimmie Johnson ran into Kurt Busch from behind, which started a chain reaction that got Sadler involved. When he was hit, he was sent toward the grass and into the guardrail.

The subsequent Elliott Sadler crash was incredibly hard - so much so that the front end was destroyed, and the engine flew onto the track. The guardrail did not have SAFER barriers, which was already a cause for concern at Pocono Raceway.

Safety difficulties were already a big issue in June, when Kasey Khane almost went over the outside wall in a crash. Concerns were at a tipping point after that, as yesterday's race winner, Greg Biffle, recently said that someone would get killed on this track one day. The Elliott Sadler crash had brief fears of that coming true, but the driver did get out of it.

However, Sadler was sore coming out of the car, and so was Kurt Busch after his spin on the grass. They escaped further injuries, but that wasn't credited to the track. In fact, credit for the Elliott Sadler crash not being worse was given to the car, despite the punishment it took.