It's a sad irony that the driver who has had the hardest crash of the year, Elliott Sadler at Pocono in July, is also the driver who has been involved in the most incidents After getting involved in a four-car crash in turn 2 late in the race two weeks ago at New Hampshire Motor Speedway, Sadler chalked up incident number 14 for the year.
That put him in the lead, ahead of Sam Hornish Jr. and Joey Logano, who each have been involved in 13 spins or crashes that prompted yellow flags.
It's time for another installment of our exclusive FanHouse crash and spin roundup. And after 28 races, with eight more to go, while Sadler leads with 14, Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Kevin Harvick have been involved in the fewest, with two each.
The worst of Sadler's 14, of course, was his full speed, head-on crash into an earthen berm at Pocono on Aug. 1 -- number 12 on his list. Although Sadler was unhurt save for some serious soreness, the engine and most of the front end of his car was torn off by the impact (right). NASCAR officials later told him it was the hardest crash their in-car monitoring devices had ever recorded.
Sadler's year-long record, however, is not so much a reflection of a sudden burst of futility, but more of a steady, relentlessly consistency. Since the last time we checked 13 races ago, Sadler has surged into the lead past Marcos Ambrose, who held the lead at 10. But in the last 13 races, Ambrose got his act together, and only added two more incidents, so he's at 12 after 28 races,
Sadler's year of the crash plague got started right off the bat at Daytona, although that wasn't any surprise, since he was one of 19 drivers involved in incidents that crazy day. Sadler picked up number two at Atlanta, then had two in a single race -- a double -- at Martinsville. He picked up another double at Talladega and then added to his total at Richmond and the first Pocono race.
Sadler tallied his third double of the year at Daytona in July, then added one at Chicago, had the bad wreck at Pocono and chalked up 13 and 14 at Atlanta and New Hampshire.
In addition to leading the stats for yellow flags, Sadler probably holds the lead among drivers in using the phrase "had nowhere to go."
At Daytona in July, Sadler's trouble came with Hornish, who closely trails Sadler in incidents.
"I was trying to stay away from him, but that's just the way my season has gone," Sadler said after the second of his two incidents there, which happened during the green-white-checkered finish. "I just cannot get a break. We were gonna have a solid top seven or eight finish, just trying to make it to the end, but it's just one of those years. It's just very hard to swallow."
Surprisingly, the driver who's had the most incidents in the past 14 races, since we last checked these stats, is Jimmie Johnson. His slump is reflected in the seven incidents he's been involved in since the 14-race mark, which came after the first Michigan race in June.
Johnson only had three incidents in the first 14 events, but his summer spasm of trouble, and seven more yellows, thrust him into double digits with a total of 10. Johnson is one of only 10 regular drivers who has been involved in 10 or more yellow-flag incidents thus far this season. Johnson, who usually finds ways to avoid trouble, even had a rare (for him) double at New Hampshire two weeks ago.
Of particular note is that tied for fourth place, with 12 incidents, is the Red Bull Toyota No. 83. Five different drivers have been involved in amassing that dubious total for the Red Bull team. Brian Vickers had five before he had to step out at the beginning of the summer because of blood clots. Casey Mears filled in for a few races and tallied two more. Road racing specialists Mattias Ekstrom and Boris Said added one each at Sonoma and Watkins Glen respectively, and Reed Sorensen has posted three.
Meanwhile, at the other end of the spectrum, Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s ho-hum year at least has not been costly in terms of wrecked race cars. He was the only driver without a yellow flag spin or crash after the first 14 races, but finally smeared his perfect record at Indy in late July. He added another at Pocono a week later, but otherwise has had clean races.
Tied with Earnhardt for the lowest, at two, is Harvick, who has been perfect in the last 14 races. His incidents came at Bristol in the spring and first Pocono. In second place for lowest is Matt Kenseth, with three, while Clint Bowyer is third with four.
The guys in the body shop at Richard Childress Racing are having a nice, relaxed, unbusy year in 2010 thanks to the collective skill of RCR's three drivers in staying out of trouble. With Harvick at two and Bowyer at four, Jeff Burton rounds out the three-car outfit with six incidents. That's only a dozen among the three of them, which is fewer than the individual totals of the most trouble-prone drivers.
The FanHouse Sprint Cup Crash and Spin Roundup (after 28 races)
2 - Dale Earnhardt Jr., Kevin Harvick
3 - Matt Kenseth
4 - Clint Bowyer
5 - Robby Gordon, AJ Allmendinger, Scott Speed, Carl Edwards
6 - Denny Hamlin, Jeff Gordon, Jeff Burton, Martin Truex, Jr., David Reutimann
7 - Jamie McMurray, David Ragan, Tony Stewart, Greg Biffle, Paul Menard
8 - Mark Martin, Ryan Newman, Regan Smith
9 - Bobby Labonte
10 - Kurt Busch, Kasey Kahne, Kyle Busch, Juan Pablo Montoya, Jimmie Johnson
11 - Brad Keselowski
12 - Marcos Ambrose, the five drivers of the No. 83 Toyota
13 - Sam Hornish Jr., Joey Logano
14 - Elliott Sadler
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