Short track racing is full of bumping and banging and typically caution-filled, but Saturday night’s Crown Royal presents the Dan Lowry 400 featured an oddity on a short track; the ‘Big One’.

The carnage that took place going into Turn 3 on lap 229 looked like a scene from last week at Talladega Superspeedway, as eleven cars piled into each other, blocking the track and bringing out the red flag.

Three-wide racing throughout the night was bound to give way on the ¾-mile short track. On lap 229, J.J. Yeley and Dave Blaney got together coming off Turn 4, leaving Carl Edwards with no where to go. Edwards clipped the right rear of Yeley’s car sending the No. 96 hard into the outside wall and stacking up the field.

As Yeley attempted to regain speed, Patrick Carpentier was hit from behind and sent sliding hard into the inside retaining wall. Carpentier’s No. 10 LifeLock Dodge shot back across the track into traffic as drivers hopped on the brakes and tried to avoid getting involved, with little luck.

“It was a pinball ride,” Carpentier explained outside the infield care center. “Down the backstretch I saw the crash happening. I was trying to go to the inside to avoid it, slowing down and I think I got hit from behind, spun around and then hit the inside rail almost accelerated back to corner three and got into the cars and everybody got into me. It was a pretty hard hit…Knocked the wind out of me, but we’re okay. These wrecks happen fast and just trying to avoid it.”

One of those cars that hit Carpentier’s machine was that of Kurt Busch. As Busch’s No. 2 Miller Lite Dodge attempted to avoid the wreck, there was little he could do.

“The 10 car was on the inside spinning around and he ricocheted back up into the group of us. I had my front brakes all locked up. I had nowhere to go.”

In all eleven cars were caught up in the melee including Michael McDowell, Regan Smith, Matt Kenseth, Jeff Burton, David Gilliland, Juan Pablo Montoya, Jimmie Johnson, Busch, Carpentier, Yeley and Edwards. The ensuing red flag lasted just over twenty-one minutes as track workers attempted to clean up the mess.

“I was telling the guys that it was the big one here at a three-quarter-mile track,” Yates Racing’s David Gilliland explained. “That’s what it felt like inside the car. Everybody is so close with this new car…Everybody is on top of each other and when something happens like that on a track like this, there’s just nowhere to go and everybody gets a little of it.”