Crash a violent reminder that road courses can bite

It looked less like the garage area at Watkins Glen International, and more like a salvage yard. Ruined racecars sat in their stalls, exposed bars and wires dangling to the concrete floor. Crewmen used electric saws to cut away piece after piece, dumping them all in a heap in the corner. The place was strewn with wreckage -- part of a crumpled radiator lying here, a piece of torn sheet metal there.

And then there was David Gilliland's Ford -- or what, until a few minutes earlier, had been David Gilliland's Ford. The car was so damaged, the exterior so collapsed and scraped up, that it barely resembled the vehicle that had taken the starting flag in Sunday's Sprint Cup event. No wonder, given that it had been at the epicenter of a harrowing nine-car pile-up with seven laps remaining Sunday, a wreck that halted the road course race for 43 minutes and sent one former series champion to the hospital.


Labonte sent to hospital
Lap-by-Lap: Watkins Glen
Video: Big wreck, red flag
"I just want to understand who started all of this, because that is crazy," said Max Papis, the road-course ace driving Haas CNC's No. 70 car. "Someone hit me in the back first, spun my car around. The next thing there was a black car stopped. I was wide open, let off and on the brake, someone was pushing me and I ended up in the wall. It was a heavy impact against the wall, but my Chevrolet car was awesome. With the HANS device and the protection of God, I am all right."

And thankfully so, given that Sunday's accident was a violent reminder of just how treacherous a road-course event can be. Papis, Gilliland, and Dave Blaney were each examined and released at the track's infield care center following the wreck, but Bobby Labonte climbed out of his No. 43 car gingerly and was transported by ambulance to a hospital in nearby Elmira. Labonte had complained of discomfort in his rib and abdomen area, according to Robbie Loomis, the vice president of his Petty Enterprises team. Later Sunday, NASCAR announced that Labonte had been released from the hospital and cleared for return to competition.

"They think he's OK," Loomis said immediately after the event. "He's a little sore. That was a heck of a wreck."

That it was. It started exiting the track's 11th and final turn, when Michael McDowell appeared to lean into Gilliland and send the No. 38 car crashing into a tire barrier lining the outside wall. Gilliland rebounded into the narrow chokepoint between the frontstretch and the entrance to pit road, and suddenly cars were slamming into each other. He took two tremendous hits from the cars of Joe Nemechek and Labonte. Papis' car ricocheted off one vehicle after another. And Sam Hornish Jr. careened into the sand barrels protecting the end of the outside pit wall, showering the track in jagged pieces of yellow and black plastic that track workers later dumped into a ditch in the infield.