“The Rest of It Is Trash”- Joe Gibbs Racing Prodigy Divulges the Fate of the Cars After Wrecks

It is no secret—NASCAR is a dangerous sport. Once on the track, drivers are subject to the harshest environment, where anything can happen. So wrecks and crashes are not surprising and most accept it to be a part of the sport.

Some may even say—it adds to the “danger” appeal which some people just enjoy. Motorsport is an expensive affair, so when a car crashes, it’s a punch to the team owners. Recently, Christopher Bell from Joe Gibbs Racing took to Instagram to share a car’s fate when it is towed away from the crash site. 

Christopher Bell on what happens to wrecked cars of NASCAR

Christopher Bell in the video went on to say that after the car is towed, it is taken to the shop, the car is disassembled and they save the good parts, and the rest is simply just trash. While a lot of what he said is just about right, according to experts, almost everything is recyclable, and race cars never die!

After towing the race car to the shop, you’d be surprised at what they can save from it. According to Louis Gordon, from L. Gordon Iron and Metal Co. in Statesville, NC, everything can be reused. A car is 100% recyclable! Everything from the metal, the engine, and the tires- everything gets an afterlife. Gordon said he has shredded hundreds of race cars and sent their remains to a mini-mill to be refined back into raw steel.

And while you might think, “That’s such a good approach for them, so environment friendly.” The truth is all of it makes good business sense. Nevertheless, the car experiences a series of transformations following a crash, resulting in almost complete self-reformation and redefined functionalities. 

The life of cars after a crash 

Do you know that it just about takes around 30 seconds to smash a car flat and rip it apart? Gordon says some drivers even come in with their respective cars to make a souvenir out of it. They want them pressed to a cube or something they could use for a coffee table; isn’t that just interesting?

So most cars don’t end up in a corner, forgotten. Most times these sheet metals end up as souvenirs on eBay. The engines are sent off to the scrapyard, where they are milled into new steel. This steel again comes back to the race shop sometimes. 

Tires are used as door mats or even ground into dust and used as filler on playgrounds. Oil is extracted and used by the military and postal services. So nothing ever goes to waste. According to Chad Knaus, Jimmie Johnson’s crew chief, “A car has to be pretty bad if we say it’s a ‘do not resuscitate.’ We send everything out to be recycled. You won’t find anything in the garbage can.”

What Christopher Bell shared in the video is not false, there is more to the matter. Metal is precious and what happens behind the scenes is a blessing in disguise for the environment. What do you think? Let us know in the comments below.