RICKY RUDD — Nicknamed “The Rooster,” Rudd had a horrifying airborne crash off Turn 4 in the 1984 Busch Clash, the race now known as the Sprint Unlimited. Seven days later, his face still gruesomely swollen, Rudd raced in the Daytona 500 with his eyes duct-taped open. Literally. And a week after that, he won the next NASCAR race at Richmond. That’s a big set of cojones right there.
Watch the crash here »
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMxUnz9rb74
DALE EARNHARDT— That Earnhardt was a bad-ass is a given. His crowning moment of toughness came in the closing laps of the 1997 Daytona 500, when he rolled his black No. 3 Chevrolet on the backstretch. Medical workers showed up in an ambulance to take Earnhardt to the infield medical center for evaluation. He was having no part of it. “I got in the ambulance and I looked back at the car and said, ‘Man, the wheels are still on that thing.’ I got out of the ambulance and asked the guy inside the car — they was hooking it up (to the wrecker) — I said, ‘See if it’ll crank.’ He cranked it up and I said, ‘Get out! Gimme the car back!’ and I drove it back.”
Watch the crash here »
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iiEWAPGvXX0
Watch the interview here »
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7JTT8HyRnIQ
CALE YARBOROUGH — One of the toughest men to ever hold the steering wheel, Yarborough was a former boxer and football star in high school in South Carolina. During qualifying for the 1983 Daytona 500, Yarborough became the first man in history to ever post a qualifying lap of more than 200 miles per hour in a stock car at Daytona. But on his second of two qualifying laps, Yarborough’s Chevrolet Monte Carlo got airborne and flipped over in Turn 4. He ran the race in his back-up car — a Pontiac LeMans — and won his third Daytona 500 with a last-lap pass of Buddy Baker.
Watch the crash here »
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2MQGyfPkIt8
GEOFFREY BODINE — Maybe the scariest looking crash of all-time at Daytona occurred during the 2000 NASCAR Camping World Truck Series race. Geoffrey Bodine made contact with another truck on the frontstretch, with his truck sailing high into the air and into the catchfence, igniting in a ball of flame and then doing a series of rolls on the track, only to be hit again. Bodine suffered moderate injuries, including a broken cheek and wrist, but he lived to tell about it. So violent was the impact that the engine was ripped completely out of the truck and ended up on the far side of pit road.
Watch the crash here »
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k55h0XCF1t8
DUANE BARNES — Never heard of Duane Barnes? He was sitting in a pickup truck with a jet dryer on the back during a rain delay in last year’s Daytona 500. Under caution on Lap 160, something broke on Juan Pablo Montoya’s car and it slammed into the truck where Barnes was sitting. The jet dryer exploded, 200 gallons of jet fuel caught fire and the race was red-flagged for more than two hours. Barnes was taken to Halifax Medical Center, where he was examined and then quickly released.
Watch the crash here »
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tB3IcGqe50k
