The NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series race at World Wide Technology Raceway took a frightening turn Saturday night when a chain-reaction crash on pit road brought the event to a red flag. The incident happened at the end of Stage 1 on Lap 50 as the field made its way onto pit road, with William Sawalich appearing to check up near the entrance. Rajah Caruth was then turned after contact from Nick Sanchez, sending the No. 88 Chevrolet across pit road and setting off a pileup that collected several cars.
What happened next had the packed grandstands at Gateway rise to their feet. Caruth’s Chevrolet clipped the right-rear tire of Brent Crews’ No. 19 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota as the team was making adjustments to the car. Sanchez’s No. 87 Chevrolet got caught in the middle and slid toward the same pit stall, coming into contact with members of the No. 19 crew. Rear tire changer Bryan Backus and jackman Matt Wilps were both contacted during the incident, and as luck would have it, neither suffered injuries and were able to finish tweaking the car. Joe Gibbs Racing later announced that all crew members involved were fine following the freak accident.
However, the drivers caught in the crossfire weren’t as lucky. Caruth, who entered Gateway as one of the 12 drivers competing for the O’Reilly Series championship, sustained heavy damage along with several other Chase contenders on the field. Brandon Jones was also caught up in the crash that left Sanchez and Harrison Burton unable to continue. Sanchez ended his night in P34, and Burton finished P35 after the contact and subsequent put an abrupt end to their nights. Dean Thompson, Jeb Burton, Ryan Sieg, Patrick Staropoli and Anthony Alfredo were among the other drivers on the field that were collected in the incident.
The situation unfolded in the blink of an eye. Once Caruth and Sanchez spun, the narrow pit road left the cars behind them with very little room to move. Harrison Burton later compared the incident to a traffic pileup, explaining that he could not see what had caused the initial check-up before the cars ahead of him began running into each other. Sanchez had a similar reaction afterward, saying he had experienced spins and other pit-road incidents before but had never dealt with a situation where the entire path ahead appeared to come to a stop.
NASCAR had no choice but to stop the race while crews cleared the damaged cars and fluid from pit road. The red flag lasted 7 minutes and 54 seconds, according to RACER, before the field could return to racing conditions. Cars that had already completed their pits were stood still on the backstretch while the cleanup took place, giving NASCAR time to ensure the pit-road entrance was clear before competition resumed.
For Caruth, the timing made an already tough situation even harder. He miraculously worked his way into the Chase after a dramatic regular-season finale at Daytona, where he secured the final championship spot by just five points. Now, only two races into the postseason, his No. 88 Chevrolet had been heavily damaged in an incident that began during what should have been a routine stage-break pit stop. Brandon Jones, another Chase contender, was also forced to deal with the damage from the multicar pileup.
Yet, the biggest piece of mind came from pit road. The No. 19 crew was already making adjustments to Crews’ Toyota when the cars came sliding toward them, leaving the team with almost no time to react. Backus and Wilps were contacted, but both walked away without injury and did not need to visit the infield care center. In a sport where pit crews work only feet away from cars moving through the lane, the outcome could have been far different.
The crash also changed the race’s trajectory for several drivers before the event even reached its halfway point. Cars were damaged, Chase contenders were forced into recovery mode, and pit road was temporarily unusable. Meanwhile, the rest of the field had to regroup once the green flag returned, knowing another mistake on pit road could produce an equally costly result.
Even so, the race continued after the cleanup, eventually ending with Jesse Love taking his first victory of the 2026 season after making a sharp pass past Carson Kvapil with 16 laps remaining. Love held off Sheldon Creed by 0.896 seconds, while Sam Mayer, Taylor Gray and Kvapil completed the top five. But long after the checkered flag, the scene that stood out from Gateway was the one that unfolded on pit road, where a routine stop turned into one of the most dangerous moments of the O’Reilly Series weekend.
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