‘The Big One’ At Talladega Featured Brendan Gaughan Flipping A Car Through The Air

Rain pushed a NASCAR event at one of the sport’s signature tracks to a Monday afternoon, and weekday auto racing tends to create some goofy finishes. At Talladega, that often means weirdness at extremely high speeds and that’s exactly what happened at Monday’s postseason race in NASCAR’s Monster Energy Cup Series 1000 Bulbs 500.

There was already a big wreck earlier in the race, but that one didn’t result in, let me see here, a car flipping over in the air and somehow landing on four wheels without catastrophic harm done to anyone involved.

That’s Brendan Gaughan in the No. 62 going up in the air, all four tires off the ground, and somehow landing facing the right way and continuing to drive the car to safety.

Watching this in slow motion is even crazier, as you really can’t understand how the car managed to do a complete flip like some kind of Fast & Furious movie that actually happened at high speed with real human bodies.

And thankfully he was OK enough after a look in the infield care center that he did an interview after his race day, understandably, was over.

Ryan Blaney went on to win at Talladega in a finish that was also wild, which also involved some contact and another car going airborne, though the technology did its job and it didn’t flip over.

It was a wild day to remember at Talladega and, thankfully, everyone walked away OK once it was over. NASCAR works very hard to make sure the aerodynamics of these vehicles work to keep them on the ground. But when that isn’t enough, it certainly helps to get a bit lucky.