Dale Earnhardt Jr. crossed the line at the 2015 Coke Zero 400 after battling it out with the rest of the pack. At that moment, Junior would be the unfortunate one to witness a #3 car go barreling toward the barriers in his rearview mirror at Daytona once again. Almost twenty-four years ago, while Junior expected a similar crash in his rearview to be liveable, his father failed to walk out of that car. This time around, Junior couldn’t help but tear up in those split seconds as he thought of the fate of the driver.
As for Austin Dillon, the world stopped faster than it should ever have, from over 190 miles an hour to zero in the blink of an eye. While spotters and drivers looked on in horror, once the thumbs up from the medics arrived, no one could believe just how lucky Dillon had been to come out of that horrifying wreck alive, let alone unscathed. Let’s take a look at how it all went wrong on the home stretch and explore the key reason behind Dillon’s survival on that fateful day.
Earnhardt Jr gets 2001 Daytona flashbacks as Austin Dillon flips in his rearview
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The 2015 Coke Zero was turning out to be a grand showdown as Dale Earnhardt Jr, Denny Hamlin and Kevin Harvick were all in contention for a trip to victory lane. But an overly eager Harvick nudged Hamlin a few times too many, sending him spinning into Austin Dillon, who clipped the #11 and was flung up into the catch fence. The sheer impact of Dillon’s car with the fence at a speed close to 200 mph resulted in the safety net warping to absorb the momentum, resulting in Dillon stopping with a force of over 40Gs!
Spiralling toward the inside grass, Dillon’s car had been torn apart from the front and the rear, with only the driver compartment remaining intact. The engine itself was flung meters away where it lay on the grass burning. And if all this wasn’t enough carnage, the #3 would be struck by Keselowski’s uncontrollable car just as marshals were on their way to assist Dillon. As the car came to a stop, silence fell over the entire speedway like never before.
Even Dale Earnhardt Jr forgot all about his victory as he looked back at a painful reminder. He was quoted by XX, “I was near tears. I didn’t even know who it was, but you just don’t want to see anybody get hurt. It’s an awful feeling.” Junior also remembered seeing only a black spot go into the wall, meaning the car was upside down. And he wasn’t the only one fearing the worst. Brad Keselowski revealed that he felt slightly embarrassed for his involvement in the damage caused to the #3.
He shared, “I saw his first impact and I knew when I was gonna hit him the second time that his odds were a lot lower of walking away. But thankfully, he did. Even being as far behind as I was, you couldn’t slow down from 200 miles an hour, that was frustrating. I felt very, very lucky when I got out of my car and went to Austin and saw that he was OK.”
While the entire community stood in anticipation of getting confirmation on Dillon’s condition, once he emerged from the wreck, no one could quite fathom how the #3 driver had escaped relatively unharmed from a crash of such magnitude. Although the safety net certainly did its job, the force by which the car came to a halt was so intense it was a miracle that Dillon’s driver compartment was not ripped to shreds.
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Speaking of the driver’s compartment, Dillon knew it was the crew behind the safety equipment in his car that had saved his life, sparing no praise for those who were his heroes.
Dillon had nothing but gratitude for RCR mechanics after the gruesome crash
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When Richard Childress Racing had to deliver, they certainly did. After taking time to recover from the knock, Dillon visited RCR’s mechanics to thank them for their impeccable work on the #3 Chevrolet that inevitably saved his life. While the engine and cosmetic body panels had given way, all safety measures put in place by the team such as the roll cage, harnesses and the overall integrity of the structure were immaculate.
Dillion was quoted by Jacksonville, “I talked to my interior guy that kind of bolts everything in. I think that’s probably one of the [biggest] fears for a guy that does interior is the safety of the driver. It’s what his main focus is, and I went and thanked him as soon as I got here for keeping all the bolts tight, doing his job.” The #3 driver was immensely grateful to Josh Sisco, the man responsible for securing his compartment.
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While everyone in the crowd immediately began to fear for the worst, Sisco and his team prayed for the best and put all their faith in the work they had done on the car. The trustworthy technician shared, “We knew it was going to be tight. You never know what the catch-fence will do to the car. When he got out, I was so proud of everybody that touched that car.”
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And so, through a stroke of luck and the competence of his garage, Austin Dillon managed to not only survive one of the scariest NASCAR wrecks in recent memory, but also come out of it relatively unscathed and with a lot of gratitude. Do you think things would have ended differently had RCR not done their part up to the mark?
