Terrible Triangle: Pocono Raceway Has Produced Some of NASCAR’s Most Horrific Crashes

• The so-called “Tricky Triangle,” a mainstay of the Cup Series since 1974, has a history of brutal crashes.

• The crashes happen in part because of its wacky triangular configuration and dizzily different turns than drivers deal with most race weeks.

• The list of drivers involved in Pocono chaos contains many of the sport’s all-time leading drivers.

The spread of life-saving “soft walls” across the NASCAR landscape perhaps was welcome nowhere greater than at Pocono Raceway.

The so-called “Tricky Triangle,” a mainstay of the Cup Series since 1974, has a history of brutal crashes, in part because of its wacky triangular configuration and dizzily different turns. The list of drivers involved in Pocono chaos contains many of the sport’s all-time leading drivers.

In 1980, the track produced one of the scariest crashes of Richard Petty’s career—and the King had some dicey ones. He lost control after losing his right front tire and climbed the outside wall after hard impact. In the smoky aftermath of the wreck, Darrell Waltrip hit Petty’s car on the driver side.

Petty later described the pain produced by the impact as among the worst of his career. A few days later, he showed up in a hotel parking lot in Anniston, Ala., wearing a neck brace to protect his broken neck. He told reporters he would race the next Sunday at Talladega Superspeedway, and he did.

Others who met mayhem at Pocono weren’t so lucky. Chief among them was one of Petty’s main rivals, Bobby Allison. In 1988, Allison lost control of his car and was T-boned in the driver side by Jocko Maggiacomo. Allison suffered numerous injuries, including a closed-head wound, and almost died. He needed months of rehabilitation, lost memories of some of his glory years and saw his career reach an early end.

Pocono also didn’t give a pass to one of the sport’s toughest drivers, Dale Earnhardt. His car flipped in a 1982 crash with Tim Richmond, who climbed from his car to help Earnhardt cross the track to safety. Earnhardt suffered a broken kneecap.

One of the track’s most spectacular wrecks occurred in the first turn on the first lap in 2002. Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Steve Park, then teammates at Dale Earnhardt Inc. crashed in tandem into infield guard rails, Park’s car absorbing the bigger part of the damage.

Another historically vicious crash occurred off the tunnel turn in 1992 when Davey Allison, his car tapped by Darrell Waltrip, sailed into an inside guard rail and flipped numerous times before stopping in a battered heap. Allison suffered several injuries but showed up at Talladega Superspeedway to start the next week’s race despite looking like he should be recovering in bed.

A 1989 crash involving Greg Sacks and Lake Speed practically destroyed a section of the track’s outside wall. In 1999, veteran driver Dave Marcis avoided injury when his car hit the outside wall at near full speed, pancaking the front end. It was one of the most vicious hits of Marcis’ long career.

The track’s high-speed front straightaway, 3,740 feet long, produces alarmingly high speeds and puts pressure on brakes as drivers roar into the first turn. In 2006, the value of soft-wall technology was underlined when Jeff Gordon touched his brake pedal near the end of the straightaway and discovered his brakes were gone. He slammed hard into the outside SAFER barrier, crunching his car. Gordon was not injured.

Of course, soft walls don’t guarantee injury-free racing. Kurt Busch backed into the outside wall during qualifying at Pocono last year, suffered concussion-like symptoms and hasn’t returned to driving.