TRAGIC: Racecar flies upside-down in Michigan NASCAR Cup race — second flip in Three days

BROOKLYN, MI — A NASCAR Cup Series driver went for an unexpected ride on Monday. On Lap 136 of the FireKeepers Casino 400 at Michigan International Speedway, Spire Motorsports driver Corey LaJoie went airborne on the backstretch in a spectacular wreck.

After sliding across the track for hundreds of yards, LaJoie’s machine did a barrel roll before coming to rest near Turn 3.

LaJoie exited the car, and was later evaluated and released from the Henry Ford Health infield care center, with dirt still smattered across his shoulder. “That’s just how things have went this year,” LaJoie said on the NBC broadcast after the incident.

“That’s twice I’ve been upside-down. (Gragson) chopped me a couple of times, especially on (Turn 2) when I had a run. It was a ride. There’s sparks and dirt and all sorts of stuff coming into the car. I thought we had a top-10, top-12 car today, but ended up on our roof.”

LaJoie expressed gratitude to the safety features in the vehicle for letting him escape the collision mostly unscathed. There were reports of strong wind gusts around the track, particularly a headwind on the backstretch, that might have aided LaJoie in taking off.

This weekend, this is the second occasion a driver has finished a race unexpectedly. Kyle Sieg spun around on the backstretch many times during the last lap of the Xfinity Series race on Saturday.

It was the 200-lap race on Monday’s second noteworthy crash. With sixty laps remaining, just after the restart, Kyle Larson of Hendrick Motorsports lost control in the middle of Turn 4 and spun. After that, Bubba Wallace crashed into Larson’s No. 5 vehicle, setting off a series of events. Christopher Bell, Todd Gilliland, and Joey Logano also sustained serious injuries when other cars started to turn. The crash ended the day for those three as well as Larson.