Kasey Kahne smashes into pit wall, sends helmets flying (Video)
A Sprint Cup Series car hit the pit road wall at Pocono for the second time in two days on Sunday.
In the opening laps of Sunday’s race, Kasey Kahne’s car snapped loose off turn three. He slid into pit road and smashed into the wall that separates pit lane from where the crews and fans stand.
The impact from Kahne’s hit was so hard that a piece of his car was wedged into the wall, which appeared to bend at a joint. The wall did its job and held up, but NASCAR red-flagged the race so welders could repair a gap that was created in it.
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Pit crews put their helmets on the wall when they’re not using them. Those helmets became veritable cannonballs as they were launched towards the pit boxes when Kahne’s car made impact with the wall. NASCAR said no one was hurt behind pit wall. Kahne was OK.
“I just got loose, it was late exit, a lot later than I would have expected,” Kahne said. “That’s how I ended up so far down pit road which was crazy. I’ve never ended up over there. I just got loose and basically spun and … that was it. I tried saving it, kind of avoided running into the [outside] pit wall and hit the one on the left not the one on the right.”
“… Not sure why that happened, what happened so quickly there. But it was gone.”
Kahne said he couldn’t believe his car was heading down pit road.
“At first I couldn’t believe I was clear over here this late in the corner and then all the way to the left heading towards pit wall and then I saw the people – I was like ‘Man you better take off running, you know, get out of the way.’ I haven’t done anything like that before, so that was kind of crazy the way it all it happened.”
During Saturday’s practice session, Jeb Burton spun and crashed into nearly the same spot that Kahne did. If you look at Kahne’s crash, you can see the tire tracks that Burton created on Saturday. It’s crazy. Thankfully when Burton crashed there weren’t any pit boxes or many people behind the wall.
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Nick Bromberg is the editor of From The Marbles on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter!
