JFN
12-14-2006, 04:26 PM
I thought this was pretty good:
Not since Dale Earnhardt showed up at the 1999 Brickyard 400 without his mustache (he'd shaved it off so his snorkel mask would fit) has there been so much speculation in NASCAR.
Yes, Jimmie Johnson's golf cart accident got people talking.
Was he on the roof of the cart or in his seat? Why was the Nextel Cup champ letting someone else drive? Was the driver really major league pitcher Mike Hampton? Or was it X Games ace and Johnson's Race of Champions partner Travis Pastrana? Or was it the second shooter from the grassy knoll? (Johnson's camp has admitted that the champ fell off the top of the cart while "horsing around").
The good news is that Johnson's cracked wrist should be all healed up by the time he has to hit the high banks of Daytona for testing in mid-January. The bad news? He's not even close to making our list of the Top Five Most Bizarre NASCAR injuries. Some were wild, some weird, and others were just plain stupid. No matter what the cause, the ones inflicted with the pain were all back behind the wheel in less time than it takes to say, "Hang on, Jimmie, I'm making a U-turn at the driving range!"
5. The Horse That Nearly Killed Richard Childress
En route to a Cup race at Phoenix, team owner Richard Childress and his driver, Dale Earnhardt, made a pit stop on the Arizona-New Mexico border to do a little elk hunting. During the trail ride up the side of a rocky mountain, Earnhardt's horse got spooked by a patch of ice and pitched backwards toward Childress, who was riding close behind. Childress was thrown from his horse and slid down the cliff, eventually landing in a tree some 50 feet below. The result was a face full of cuts and a cracked sternum, but RC simply taped it up and continued the hunt.
4. Denny's Footrace
All but forgotten thanks to his amazing rookie season, Denny Hamlin pulled one of the most bone-headed moves of 2006 during a May test session at the Lowe's Motor Speedway. Killing some downtime between laps, Hamlin and his crew started timing each other as they ran — as in with their feet — a lap around the team's hauler sitting in the garage.
Hamlin was on a record-setting pace when he went to cut a tight corner and grabbed hold of a piece of metal to make the turn ... promptly ripping the skin between the pinky and wrist on his left hand. Nineteen stitches later, he was back behind the wheel at Richmond and finished second.
Richard Childress was thrown from a horse and cracked his sternum, but taped up the injury and continued elk hunting with Dale Earnhardt. (Doug Benc / Getty Images)
3. Yo, Kenny! Thumbs Up, Dude!
Eleven years earlier, Kenny Schrader was in at Evergreen Speedway in Monroe, Wash., to run a NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series race when he lost half a digit ... and we're not talking about the car number.
Kenny reached under the hood to test an alternator belt, but apparently the crew wasn't aware of where the boss was. Crew chief Tim Koluth gave the command to fire up the engine and the belt ripped off the top of the driver's left thumb. Local surgeons sewed up what was left and Schrader was racing in Charlotte one week later.
"That's one less nail I have to worry about biting," he told the media. " I think I'll take the top of my thumb home and put it under my pillow to see if I get a quarter."
2. Buck Baker Sees Red
The 1956-57 NASCAR Grand National champion wasn't actually hurt during the Darlington incident that landed him on our list, but everyone sure thought he was.
Long before Gatorade invented the GIDS system, drivers grabbed whatever cold beverages they liked, poured it in a Thermos bottle and stowed under the seat of their race car. Baker had tried beer, but found it got too frothy during the race, so he decided he would try tomato juice.
At some point during the race (he could never remember which it was specifically, just that it was at Darlington), Baker wrecked violently into the turn four wall. When the safety crew ran up to check on the living legend, they found him covered in fluid, his white jumpsuit saturated in dark red.
"They thought it was blood." Baker told me back during a conversation in 1998. "One guy damn near fainted. He screamed, "'Ahhhh! The sumbitch got his head cut off!'"
1. Cale Comes Down To Earth
Cale Yarborough's list of near-death, off-track incidents lends a little perspective on how ridiculously out of proportion the Jimmie Johnson story has grown. Throughout Yarborough's life, the three-time Cup champ has been bitten by a rattlesnake, struck by lightning, shot, and nearly attacked by his pet bear while flying an airplane. And no, I'm not making any of this up.
But the single greatest and most bizarre NASCAR Injury happened in Jacksonville, Fla. in 1958. Yarborough was working with a traveling air show as a skydiver and leaped from a plane at 5,000 feet. At 2,000 feet he pulled the rip cord ... and nothing happened. He pulled again ... still nothing. At about 200 feet above the Earth, the chute weakly rolled out, providing a minimal amount of drag to slow him down.
"Lucky for me, I landed on a patch of high grass and mud, which gave me a little bit of a cushion. I walked away with a chipped elbow."
After reading that, we may now know why Jimmie Johnson refuses to let the real details of his golf cart crash be revealed. He's waiting until he can come up with a better story, something that can compete with horse wrecks, lost appendages and unopened parachutes.
Not since Dale Earnhardt showed up at the 1999 Brickyard 400 without his mustache (he'd shaved it off so his snorkel mask would fit) has there been so much speculation in NASCAR.
Yes, Jimmie Johnson's golf cart accident got people talking.
Was he on the roof of the cart or in his seat? Why was the Nextel Cup champ letting someone else drive? Was the driver really major league pitcher Mike Hampton? Or was it X Games ace and Johnson's Race of Champions partner Travis Pastrana? Or was it the second shooter from the grassy knoll? (Johnson's camp has admitted that the champ fell off the top of the cart while "horsing around").
The good news is that Johnson's cracked wrist should be all healed up by the time he has to hit the high banks of Daytona for testing in mid-January. The bad news? He's not even close to making our list of the Top Five Most Bizarre NASCAR injuries. Some were wild, some weird, and others were just plain stupid. No matter what the cause, the ones inflicted with the pain were all back behind the wheel in less time than it takes to say, "Hang on, Jimmie, I'm making a U-turn at the driving range!"
5. The Horse That Nearly Killed Richard Childress
En route to a Cup race at Phoenix, team owner Richard Childress and his driver, Dale Earnhardt, made a pit stop on the Arizona-New Mexico border to do a little elk hunting. During the trail ride up the side of a rocky mountain, Earnhardt's horse got spooked by a patch of ice and pitched backwards toward Childress, who was riding close behind. Childress was thrown from his horse and slid down the cliff, eventually landing in a tree some 50 feet below. The result was a face full of cuts and a cracked sternum, but RC simply taped it up and continued the hunt.
4. Denny's Footrace
All but forgotten thanks to his amazing rookie season, Denny Hamlin pulled one of the most bone-headed moves of 2006 during a May test session at the Lowe's Motor Speedway. Killing some downtime between laps, Hamlin and his crew started timing each other as they ran — as in with their feet — a lap around the team's hauler sitting in the garage.
Hamlin was on a record-setting pace when he went to cut a tight corner and grabbed hold of a piece of metal to make the turn ... promptly ripping the skin between the pinky and wrist on his left hand. Nineteen stitches later, he was back behind the wheel at Richmond and finished second.
Richard Childress was thrown from a horse and cracked his sternum, but taped up the injury and continued elk hunting with Dale Earnhardt. (Doug Benc / Getty Images)
3. Yo, Kenny! Thumbs Up, Dude!
Eleven years earlier, Kenny Schrader was in at Evergreen Speedway in Monroe, Wash., to run a NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series race when he lost half a digit ... and we're not talking about the car number.
Kenny reached under the hood to test an alternator belt, but apparently the crew wasn't aware of where the boss was. Crew chief Tim Koluth gave the command to fire up the engine and the belt ripped off the top of the driver's left thumb. Local surgeons sewed up what was left and Schrader was racing in Charlotte one week later.
"That's one less nail I have to worry about biting," he told the media. " I think I'll take the top of my thumb home and put it under my pillow to see if I get a quarter."
2. Buck Baker Sees Red
The 1956-57 NASCAR Grand National champion wasn't actually hurt during the Darlington incident that landed him on our list, but everyone sure thought he was.
Long before Gatorade invented the GIDS system, drivers grabbed whatever cold beverages they liked, poured it in a Thermos bottle and stowed under the seat of their race car. Baker had tried beer, but found it got too frothy during the race, so he decided he would try tomato juice.
At some point during the race (he could never remember which it was specifically, just that it was at Darlington), Baker wrecked violently into the turn four wall. When the safety crew ran up to check on the living legend, they found him covered in fluid, his white jumpsuit saturated in dark red.
"They thought it was blood." Baker told me back during a conversation in 1998. "One guy damn near fainted. He screamed, "'Ahhhh! The sumbitch got his head cut off!'"
1. Cale Comes Down To Earth
Cale Yarborough's list of near-death, off-track incidents lends a little perspective on how ridiculously out of proportion the Jimmie Johnson story has grown. Throughout Yarborough's life, the three-time Cup champ has been bitten by a rattlesnake, struck by lightning, shot, and nearly attacked by his pet bear while flying an airplane. And no, I'm not making any of this up.
But the single greatest and most bizarre NASCAR Injury happened in Jacksonville, Fla. in 1958. Yarborough was working with a traveling air show as a skydiver and leaped from a plane at 5,000 feet. At 2,000 feet he pulled the rip cord ... and nothing happened. He pulled again ... still nothing. At about 200 feet above the Earth, the chute weakly rolled out, providing a minimal amount of drag to slow him down.
"Lucky for me, I landed on a patch of high grass and mud, which gave me a little bit of a cushion. I walked away with a chipped elbow."
After reading that, we may now know why Jimmie Johnson refuses to let the real details of his golf cart crash be revealed. He's waiting until he can come up with a better story, something that can compete with horse wrecks, lost appendages and unopened parachutes.