There are few places on Earth more violent than Bristol Motor Speedway when things go wrong. It’s a half-mile concrete blender where hopes, dreams, and the occasional fender get shredded into confetti. And on Saturday afternoon, during the NASCAR Xfinity Series race, two drivers chasing a Dash 4 Cash payday found that out the hard way—before the race had even gotten warmed up.
It was lap 77, and Sheldon Creed was minding his own business just outside the top 15—probably thinking about tire strategy, or what flavor of Gatorade he’d be handed on pit road. Then Dean Thompson showed up. With all the grace of a bowling ball tossed by a toddler, Thompson got into the back of Creed and spun him like a bad carnival ride.
Enter Brennan Poole, stage left.
Poole, bless him, was rocketing around the high line like he was trying to sling his Chevy to the moon. But unfortunately, the moon had just exploded into a Ford Mustang sitting sideways in the middle of the track. With nowhere to go and just enough time to hear his spotter yell “LOOK OUT!” Poole’s race ended in a cloud of tire smoke and crumpled sheet metal.
“I couldn’t even see where the 00 (Creed) was at yet,” Poole said. “So I just started slowing down and he was right in the middle of the track. And I started to spin out and I nailed him.
“But everything here happens so fast. And you also can’t really see it. It’s just it’s just kind of a kind of a tough deal.”
Tough deal, indeed. NASCAR threw the red flag, wisely deciding that enough carnage for one moment was quite enough. Luckily, both Creed and Poole emerged from their broken machines under their own power, proving once again that today’s race cars are built tougher than a Texas steak cooked well-done.
“Yeah, I feel fine. It knocked the air out of me there for a second,” Creed said, managing to flash a post-crash smile. “I’m bummed for all of our guys to be taken out in stage 1 like that, but I don’t know. Happy to be OK and fight on next week.”
So with Creed and Poole out, the Dash 4 Cash—essentially NASCAR’s version of “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire” with fenders—came down to Austin Hill and Justin Allgaier. Now, neither one of them had a snowball’s chance of winning the actual race, which Kyle Larson was busy dominating like a man who’d brought a SpaceX rocket to a bicycle race. But in the end, it was Allgaier who picked up the bonus check with a tidy third-place finish.
Because at Bristol, you don’t have to win the war to cash in—you just have to survive the battle. And on this wild afternoon, survival was worth a small fortune.
Greg is the author of "The Nuts and Bolts of NASCAR: The Definitive Viewers' Guide to Big-Time Stock Car Auto Racing" and has been published in major publications across the country including the Los Angeles Times, the Cleveland Plain Dealer and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. He was also a contributor to Chicken Soup for the NASCAR Soul, published in 2010, and the Christmas edition in 2016. He wrote as the NASCAR, Formula 1, Auto Reviews and National Veterans Affairs Examiner for Examiner.com and has appeared on Fox News. He holds a BS degree in communications, a Masters degree in psychology and is currently a PhD candidate majoring in psychology. He is currently the weekend Motorsports Editor for Autoweek.