Cut tire leads to 27-car wreck in Aaron's 499

TALLADEGA, Ala. -- A cut tire was the culprit for the second straight day at Talladega Superspeedway as 27 cars were involved in a massive accident between Turns 1 and 2 on the fifth lap of Sunday's Aaron's 499.

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For the second Winston Cup restrictor-plate race in a row, Ryan Newman took the wildest ride. He started the melee when a cut tire sent his Dodge into Mark Martin's Ford.

Newman's car speared the outside wall and tipped up on its side before it landed and slid to the bottom of the racetrack, where it briefly caught fire.

No one was injured when one of Newman's car's tires was ripped off and sailed over the wall. It struck a track safety worker's car that was parked in a restricted area.

"I'm OK (although) my foot's beat up pretty good," Newman said. "Unfortunately, we cut a tire -- it felt like the left rear, going into (Turn) 1 (and) that was it.

Newman was in no mood to debate the benefits of restrictor plate racing when he emerged from the track's infield medical center.

"What's the solution for this kind of racing?" Newman said. "Don't come here. We have other race tracks we could go to."

Martin said his day was ended by bad luck.

"I was just in the right spot, man," Martin said. "A few feet further ahead or further back and I would have been all right -- but I just can't believe it."

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Newman said the impact of his accident was not as hard as that of Kyle Petty's wreck at Bristol Motor Speedway two weeks ago, in which Petty suffered rib injuries severe enough to cause him to miss last week's race at Texas.

"Kyle might have hit harder, but it was hard," Newman said of his head-on impact. "I guess it's better to happen now than at the end (of the race)."

Dale Earnhardt Jr., the winner of the past four Winston Cup races at Talladega, damaged the front of his Chevrolet when he ran into the back of Jeff Green's Monte Carlo.

Earnhardt was at the back of the pack because his team changed its engine Sunday morning. Bobby Labonte, Mike Skinner and Green's teams all changed engines and all were involved in the wreck.

When the race restarted, 26 cars were on the lead lap and the rest of the 43-car field was in the garage.

A number of drivers were seen and released at the track's infield medical center and no injuries were reported.

After 55 laps of the 188-lap event, five cars were officially listed out of the race due to the accident, including those of Ricky Rudd, Hermie Sadler, Johnny Benson, Casey Mears and Jimmy Spencer.

The "big one" is always a topic of conversation at Talladega, where three- and four-wide racing is common. There were three cautions in this event last year but none in the fall EA SPORTS 500.

	Some of the damage caused by the wreck on lap 4 on Sunday. Credit: Autostock

"It usually happens once," Newman said. "It's the way these races are. It's not like the races they used to have here, that's for sure."

Jamie McMurray, who was also involved in the wreck but re-entered the race, agreed.

"These guys put so much effort into these superspeedway cars, this is kind of tough to swallow," he said. "I think, as long as we race at these tracks, that's what you're going to have.

"If it were up me, I'd say let's go to Rockingham and Darlington two more times and not worry about coming here. It's fun to race here, but when you wreck so much stuff -- these guys work so hard.

"It's very frustrating to them to work a month on this one car and in six laps it's destroyed."

Rusty Wallace's winless streak grew to 70 races when he became involved.

"Damn it -- I'll tell you that's upsetting," Wallace said. "In three laps we picked up 20 positions -- this thing was just screaming.

"Everybody was locked on the bottom of the racetrack, so I went to the top side and just went past everybody. Boy, when I got into (turn) 2 I saw the 12 turned sideways and I said, 'Aw man.' There was no saving it."