FanHouse CrashVideooftheWeek

Sunday's Sprint Cup Series race at Martinsville Speedway saw its share of spins and wrecks to contribute the races 18 cautions.

Aside from Matt Kenseth's antics, the biggest crash of the day involved 5 cars early in the 500 lap event. The melee, shown below, involved Jeff Gordon, Bobby Labonte, Aric Almirola, Scott Riggs, and Martin Truex Jr.


Almirola slid the nose of his No. 8 coming off of turn four into Bobby Labonte on the outside, turning the No. 43 and blocking the track for the rest of the field. Riggs then gets turned by Gordon as the accordion effect takes shape, damaging the nose of the No. 24.

Due to the fact that Sprint Cup Series was off last weekend for Easter, the Fanhouse is digging deep for some past highlights from Martinsville Speedway, site of this Sunday's Goody's Cool Orange 500.

In this one from 1999, Tony Stewart and the late Kenny Irwin have their share of run-ins on the half-mile paper clip. Apologies in advance for the European broadcast commentary, I couldn't find the ESPN version.



The conflict got started early in the day when Stewart spun out Irwin in turn 4.

Tony would later call that a mistake, and with good reason.

The concrete surface at Bristol Motor Speedway was re-done over the summer of 2007, with variable banking added in the already steeply-banked corners.

The change ultimately changed the form of racing at the legendary bull ring from single groove knock-em-to-pass-em racing to multi-groove, pass-em-high-or-low racing. Or, that change was in effect until the final restart on Sunday during the waning laps of the Food City 500 when Kevin Harvick body slammed Tony Stewart in to the wall. Watch below:

Harvick took blame for the accident as he should have. Stewart -- who is on probation -- was awkwardly calm though he got flat taken out by Harvick.