Bone-chilling crashes dotted NASCAR’s racetrack for the second week in a row, with the rain-delayed Michigan race witnessing one of the most harrowing incidents. Corey LaJoie’s overtaking maneuver went awry when his No. 7 Chevy made contact with Noah Gragson’s No. 10 Ford, sending LaJoie’s car airborne. After flipping several times before coming to a stop on the grass, LaJoie was thankfully unharmed.

NASCAR took a strong step to curtail such incidents. Yet the Daytona outing revealed the futility of it all as more flipping crashes followed. Even then, Martin Truex Jr’s Xfinity star brother sided with Denny Hamlin in dialing down the severity of this type of crash.

Denny Hamlin’s view is shared

Corey LaJoie’s crash jolted some fans to the core, as they inquired about his health. However, Denny Hamlin was unfazed, as he said flips like LaJoie’s create less impact. His yardstick was wall crashes, that have produced more serious injuries in NASCAR’s history. A prime example would be Dale Earnhardt’s fatal hit with the wall at the 2001 Daytona 500. So even Dale Earnhardt Jr sided with Denny Hamlin’s view. Following LaJoie’s incident, NASCAR installed shark fins or additional roof flaps to increase the margin of liftoff.

But as we saw at the Coke Zero Sugar 400, that innovation hardly worked – but like Denny Hamlin, Ryan Truex is not bothered. ‘Door, Bumper, Clear’ host Freddie Kraft broached the topic. “I don’t think the shark fin worked…We had two cars flip over this weekend instead of one.” While Michael McDowell experienced a half-flip, Josh Berry’s situation was way worse as he landed on his head. Kraft continued: “The 4 was a blowover…You can see that car (No. 2) trying to lift, and it didn’t do the same as the 4 did. I don’t know if the fin was helping that situation but it did not help the 4.”

The flip that Josh Berry underwent looked severe, and people were biting their nails until the driver showed a thumbs-up to indicate he was okay. T.J. Majors declared: “That’s not a position that I would wanna be in at all.” However, Ryan Truex concurred with Denny Hamlin’s view that hitting a wall would be far worse. “Yeah, for sure. I’ve never flipped in a stock car but I have flipped…Hitting a wall head-on definitely hurts a lot more. Or side-on, any way you hit the wall, it doesn’t feel good.”

However, one Cup Series incident demonstrated that even a flipping wreck can be dangerous.

When NASCAR revised its safety measures again

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After Dale Earnhardt lost his life, NASCAR got onto a war footing. The SAFER barrier and the HANS device were some of the safety measures that reduced driver injuries in the following years. Yet another time when the sanctioning body was forced to reconsider its safety protocol was in 2020. During the last lap of the 2020 Daytona 500 (that Denny Hamlin won), Ryan Newman‘s No. 6 Ford flipped and landed upside down. Then it shot across the track with most parts shredded and sparks flying out of it.

Fuel gushed out, and paramedics and firefighters rushed to save Newman, whose close friend Kenny Irwin Jr had died in a 2000 wreck. The driver later recalled the chilling experience, which he remembered about only from video. “I’ve watched every angle that I could possibly watch. The biggest problem is I don’t have any memory of my own angle, which is the ultimate angle. And that’s gone, and that will always be gone no matter how many times I watch a replay or different variations of that replay.” He added, “We will always continue to learn from those that we lose and those that we don’t lose, as long as we keep focused on the things that we need to to increase our level of safety.”

Evidently, we have dangerous examples from both flips and wall crashes. Hopefully, after Daytona, NASCAR will introduce sturdier measures to prevent these mishaps from occurring in the future.