They say there are only two sure things in life: death and taxes — but NASCAR fans know otherwise.
There is a third thing that’s a surefire given these days: crashes at Talladega Superspeedway.
As the NASCAR Cup and Xfinity series roll into Talladega this week, the Big One looms large on the minds of fans and competitors alike.
If this is your first rodeo, the Big One got its rather ominous name because when (not if) it happens, multiple cars get swept up in a heartbeat. It’s not uncommon to see a dozen or more cars scattered like child’s toys across the track and tri-oval.
Talladega, along with Daytona International Speedway, is huge and fast — and unforgiving. The two superspeedways often produce similar mayhem, but they’re not exactly the same. Daytona is slightly shorter, slightly narrower and is a bit more finicky when it comes to handling. And if Daytona is a handling track, Talladega is all about the horses under the hood. Wider than Daytona but no more forgiving, drivers can race three-wide, at least until they can’t. And it’s when they can’t that the Big One happens.
While most races at Talladega in recent years have produced some multicar crashes, some Big Ones are bigger than others. A dozen cars? We’re talking twice that number and more. A dozen cars doesn’t even make the top 10 on the crunch-o-meter.
Here’s a look at the top five (well, six, because there’s a tie) in terms of the number of cars collected according to NASCAR’s official race reports. Take a look at some of the absolute mayhem and then come on back for some perspective.
5 (Tie): 1997 Diehard 500, lap 140 (23 cars involved)
Race winner: Terry Labonte
Cause: Jeff Gordon cut tire
The most notable thing about this crash is that only five cars are listed as out of the race because of it. Others made repairs and got back on track for a few laps to claim the handful of points it afforded them. That’s not unusual; not every car involved is destroyed and many can continue or make repairs (unless under a damaged vehicle rule that prohibited working on cars in the garage).
5 (Tie): 2024 Yellawood 500 lap 184 (23 cars involved)
Race winner: Ricky Stenhouse Jr.
Cause: Austin Cindric turned by Brad Keselowski.
Cindric was leading when Keselowski and Joey Logano got a run on him and closed faster then expected. Conventional wisdom once said that the best place to be was the lead because the crashes would happen behind you. But that hasn’t been the case recently, when no driver is safe. It was far from intentional, as these crashes always are, and it didn’t take much to set it off.
4: 2002 Aaron’s 499 lap 164 (24 cars involved)
Race winner: Dale Earnhardt Jr.
Cause: chain reaction behind Kyle Petty fight for real estate
With just over 20 to go, drivers were looking to get into a line to make a move forward in the pack. Once a driver cracks the throttle on a restricted engine, the car loses just enough speed that cars stack up behind, and there isn’t enough throttle response for the driver who backed out to get immediately back to full speed.
2 (Tie): 2005 Aaron’s 499 lap 133 (26 cars involved)
Race winner: Jeff Gordon
Cause: Mike Wallace got loose in traffic
Unstable cars at high speeds in big packs … all it takes is for one car to get just a little out of line. That’s what happened to Wallace, who then turned into Jimmie Johnson, and from there it was on like Donkey Kong, only with more destruction. It wasn’t a great race weekend for the Wallace family as Mike’s Hall of Famer older brother Rusty was collected in the crash and his younger brother Kenny failed to qualify.
2 (Tie): 2012 Good Sam Roadside Assistance 500 lap 189 (26 cars involved)
Race Winner: Matt Kenseth
Cause: Late block attempt by leader Tony Stewart
The race was already past its scheduled distance with a green-white-checkered restart that saw Stewart take the lead from Kenseth coming to the white flag. Stewart blocked Kenseth on the backstretch, but Michael Waltrip made a move to the bottom and by the time Stewart moved to block, Waltrip was already there. Stewart got airborne in front of the rest of the field as cars piled in behind him.
Blocking on superspeedways is tricky business, because by the time a driver hears his spotter clear him, another car is already there. Earnhardt made some lasting meme content by giving teammate Johnson a ride back to pit road on his No. 88.
1: 2003 Aaron’s 499 lap 4 (24 cars involved)
Race winner: Dale Earnhardt Jr.
Cause: Ryan Newman cut tire
The field made it all of four laps before chaos broke out. Newman cut his right rear tire and shot across the track in front of most of the field. Newman, who was not a fan of superspeedway racing, narrowly avoided getting upside down. Earnhardt had been riding at the back of the pack and sustained minor damage before taking a trip through the tri-oval grass, but he recovered to win.
Historical perspective? Thought you’d never ask.
First of all, full disclosure that some of the early Talladega races don’t show the caution breakdown or list the cars involved. However, a look at the attrition from those races backs up that double-digit multi-car crashes weren’t likely.
Still, it’s impossible to ignore that the Big One wasn’t a thing in Talladega’s early days. When it first opened, drivers feared the speeds and even boycotted the track, but unlike recent years, by far the main cause of attrition at Talladega was mechanical failures and engine failures in particular. The sport’s biggest, fastest track was hell on cars.
It still is, of course, but for a different reason entirely.
What changed? A lot, but it starts in 1988 with the addition of the restrictor plate. It’s no longer used, but engines are still heavily restricted at superspeedways, so that is a constant since then. Slowing the cars down is a necessary evil, but it did change how drivers raced at superspeedways.
Between the track’s opening in 1965 and 1988, there were four crashes involving 10 or more cars. The biggest of those came in May of 1973 and involved 21 racecars, almost enough to make the top five to this day.
The 1990s saw six crashes of 10 cars or more. Three of those involved 20 or more cars.
NASCAR saw massive growth in the late 1990s and 2000s. The racing at Daytona and Talladega had already gotten tighter — and the growing fan base loved it.
So, NASCAR created a speedway package that would not only restrict power, but also keep the cars closer aerodynamically. The entire field now ran within inches of each other. Fans ate it up; drivers could drive from the back of the field to the front in a handful of laps, and finishes got closer, sometimes within inches.
Many, including NASCAR itself, decided the finishes were worth any carnage along the way. There was a brief drop in the number of cars involved in crashes for a couple of years when tandem drafting took over the superspeedways.
They dropped again when the current Next Gen car was introduced, probably because replacement parts for those cars were so scarce that drivers couldn’t risk racing in a manner that would risk hurting them.
But in general, the Big One itself has been a mere formality at Talladega (and Daytona), as fans know from the start that it’s all but guaranteed. The only questions are how many cars will be involved, if there will be more than one multi-car crash and whether their favorite driver will escape harm.
Amy is an 20-year veteran NASCAR writer and a six-time National Motorsports Press Association (NMPA) writing award winner, including first place awards for both columns and race coverage. As well as serving as Photo Editor, Amy writes The Big 6 (Mondays) after every NASCAR Cup Series race. She can also be found working on her bi-weekly columns Holding A Pretty Wheel (Tuesdays) and Only Yesterday (Wednesdays). A New Hampshire native whose heart is in North Carolina, Amy’s work credits have extended everywhere from driver Kenny Wallace’s website to Athlon Sports. She can also be heard weekly as a panelist on the Hard Left Turn podcast that can be found on AccessWDUN.com's Around the Track page.