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Eagle-eyed fans are not convinced Elliott Sadler’s side of the Michigan crash story is accurate. After declaring on the Dale Jr Download on that NASCAR is hiding footage of the crash due to his car being “A whole car length” above the catch fence, fans quickly called that declaration into question after analyzing the video. Was Sadler lying?
Here are the full comments that Sadler gave on the accident during the Dale Jr. Download.
I’m going down the fronstraightaway, and all I heard was a boom. We blew the right rear tire, and when we blew the right rear tire, the quarter panel went striaght out, so it made it like a wing of an airplane. When I [spun] it [the car] went straight up, and I was actually higher than the catch fence…The next morning is race morning. NASCAR calls me to the trailer. We go in there, and they have a video of my wreck. They show it to me, and they say, ‘That’ll be the last time you ever see that video because you’re higher than the catch fence, and we don’t want to just show that to everybody. Everybody don’t need to see that‘…I was nose down, and I was higher than the catch fence.
Elliott Sadler
When asked how high he got, he later added that he was “A whole car length” above the catch fence. The video below shows the full coverage the CBS broadcast gave the wreck, including comments from Sadler during an interview with the late Ken Squier.
The only footage of the crash available begins with an in-car camera shot as the car goes airborne and starts to flip. The broadcast then switches to a traditional camera shot from the infield, looking towards turn one as the car continues to flip before coming to a stop.
Multiple fans, like Alan Bailey in the clip we showed at the beginning, quickly began analyzing what little footage of the crash exists. Many find it hard to believe that Sadler got as high as he claims.
Elijah Burke’s response wasn’t explicitly conspiratorial, but it gave a sense of how ridiculous this would have looked.
BrakeHard doesn’t believe that this crash was as crazy as some make it out to be.
David Perticarari also believes it was exaggerated. He believes the car reached fence height, but maybe no higher than that.
Now, the $1 million question is, who is right? Ultimately, we cannot tell definitively since there is no footage of Sadler’s car at the height of its flight. It also has early 2000s SD TV footage, so the picture is not crystal clear like that of modern TV broadcasts.
However, based on what we see, particularly the roof cam, it’s hard to say that the car went 30 feet above the catch fence. Is it possible the car cleared the catch fence, or was the rear end at least the same height as the top of the catch fence? It’s certainly possible, especially given the car was clearly nose down at the start of the accident.
Perhaps the highest we say a car from this era fly was in 2003 at Talladega with, ironically enough, Elliott Sadler. After being turned into the infield, the No. 38 car flew through the air before skating on its’ roof through the infield and flipping when it returned to the track.
That car clearly was not 30 feet off the ground, but it did definitely leave the ground with the nose down. Was Sadler’s 2000 wreck higher than the catch fence at Michigan? Possibly, but was it as high as Sadler claimed it was? That’s much harder to believe.
Either way, NASCAR has made no official comment on it. It was well over 20 years ago, and no one involved in that alleged decision-making process to keep the footage under wraps is in those positions anymore.
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