Mopping Up After Bristol: Of Crashes and Crash Stats

They had the big one Sunday at Bristol Motor Speedway but it wasn't Talladega, so it wasn't really the big one.

Believe it or not, though, that little episode of bumper car madness coming out of turn three on lap 342 involved 13 cars.

The size of the wreck was somewhat surprising, considering that the resurfaced Bristol is still proving to be tamer than the Bristol of old, and the narrower exits out of turn two and four appeared to have no discernible effect. The drivers were still going two wide all the way around the track.

The yellow flag flew 10 times in Sunday's race, which is average for the track since the resurfacing in mid-2007, but only six of the 10 caution periods were for crashes.

And after the brutal wreck in Saturday evening's Scott's EZ Seed Showdown legends charity race, none of Sunday's incidents really showed up on the radar.

The vicious T-bone crash of Larry Pearson and Charlie Glotzbach didn't even look like a NASCAR crash of today -- it looked more like a really bad crash from, well, back in their day. Glotzbach's car not only pierced the driver's side of Pearson's car, it deeply penetrated it, seemingly almost to Glotzbach's windshield.

Pearson, 56, (shown at right below just before the race) was knocked unconscious and suffered a compound fracture of his left ankle, a fractured pelvis and a fractured right hand. The speedway reported he was in fair condition Monday before being released from Bristol Regional Medical Center late Monday afternoon and transported to Charlotte, where he was to be admitted to Carolinas Medical Center, obviously with a long recovery ahead of him.

Glotzbach, 71, (shown on the left) managed, with help, to walk to an ambulance after the accident. He was gingerly holding his left arm and wearing an oxygen mask. But he was so beat up in the wreck that he remained hospitalized at the Bristol hospital Monday, two days after the accident, though reportedly in good condition.

Rick Wilson won the race and it was a fun event until the wreck happened with five laps to go. Just before the accident, as the television announcers noted, some of the late model sportsman cars driven by the legends were lapping at 120 mph, which was faster than the slowest Sprint Cup cars in qualifying Friday.

This was the second year for the legends race, and Kevin Triplett, the track's vice president of public relations, said speedway officials will sit down and evaluate what needs to be done (hint: provide less powerful cars).

"With everything that has been going on this weekend and trying to get this [Food City 500] race in, we haven't had time to sit down and talk about it," Triplett said. "So many things go into running a race weekend, but we will sit down and look at everything when we don't have any other distractions."

"We sat down and evaluated the event after last year's race too," Triplett said. "We cut the celebrity portion out and changed the eligibility requirements. So we were going to review and evaluate the event even if the accident had not happened."

Like everyone else, Triplett was just thankful it wasn't worse.

Speaking of crashes, one of the more remarkable but not particularly unusual sights in a typical Sprint Cup race today is to see a car spin around in the middle of the pack and yet somehow manage to not get hit by anyone else. Today's top drivers have perfected the art of avoidance to a fault.

And yet, with only five races run in the 2010 season, nearly everyone has been involved in a yellow flag. Three quarters of the top 36 in points -- 27 out of 36 drivers -- have been involved in at least one yellow flag thus far in 2010.

Who might be among the fortunate nine who have avoided all trouble thus far? Jimmie Johnson, you ask?

Of course.

Johnson, who won Sunday's Food City 500 for his third win in five races, is indeed one of the nine, along with his Hendrick teammate Dale Earnhardt Jr. The other Hendrick drivers already have a total of five yellows between them, with Mark Martin at three and Jeff Gordon at two.

The remaining seven top-36 drivers who have not been involved in any yellow flags yet this year are Matt Kenseth, Jeff Burton, David Gilliland (in four races), Bobby Labonte, Scott Speed, Paul Menard and David Reutimann.

On the other end of the scale, who do you suppose might be leading the pack in crashes?

Not Brad Keselowski ...

Yes, indeed, Brad is tied for the lead for the most yellow flags thus far in 2010, with four. Granted, his most recent, at the end of the race at Atlanta, was not his doing, but the cold stats provide no latitude for such matters. If your car number appears on NASCAR's race report with a yellow flag, it counts.

Tied with Keselowski at the top of the list with four yellow flags in five races is Joey Logano, who had a double at Atlanta, and Travis Kvapil, who padded his total with a pair at Las Vegas.