Granted, Denny Hamlin’s championship loss felt like a personal heartbreak for many fans and peers. However, the chills that the Phoenix finale brought out were different from those brought out during the wrecks throughout the season. Several multi-car crashes and unfortunate wall-pounding unfolded across 2025. Yet only five of them stood out as the most terrifying and bone-chilling.

Denny Hamlin’s Daytona 500 big one triggered a multi-car pileup

On the final lap of the Daytona 500, nicknamed the ‘Great American Race’, a few top drivers’ great ambitions fizzled out. Denny Hamlin, Austin Cindric, Chase Briscoe, Cole Custer, and Corey LaJoie were close to grasping the Harley J. Earl trophy. The real mess started when Custer came down the track after being hung out three-wide, colliding with Briscoe and slamming into the side of Hamlin’s No. 11 car. Custer and Hamlin wrecked up the track as LaJoie spun to the inside – catching more cars in the melee.

As a result, William Byron snuck past all of them to defend his 2024 Daytona 500 victory. And the finger-pointing started soon after, with Denny Hamlin observing Custer’s actions. “I thought he, not hung a left, but steered left and was trying to crowd it. I understand what he was trying to go for — he’s going for it, all of us are — but you know, in those situations, you’ve gotta do it off of (Turn) 4,” he said. Cindric blamed whoever pushed Hamlin. And Custer himself was frustrated about the crowd.

Kyle Busch’s brutal Talladega head-on impact

Rowdy may not be in his best form at present. Yet he never stays out of the conversation, and sometimes he is spotlighted due to a harrowing mishap. This year’s April race in Talladega witnessed chaos on lap 43, when green-flag pit stops were well underway. Exiting Turn 4, a group of Fords planned to pit together, and that’s when disaster struck.

It started when Brad Keselowski slowed down to enter the pit lane under green. Kyle Busch could not slow in time and got into Keselowski’s rear, sending both cars spinning across the track. After hitting the door of Alex Bowman’s No. 48 machine, they spun to the inside. That was when Ryan Blaney got clipped in the right rear by Keselowski, spinning wildly down the frontstretch.

“I don’t know what happened,” radioed Kyle Busch. “We never dropped below the yellow line there. I don’t know if they checked up too much for him or what.” The veteran’s steering wheel was knocked 90 degrees to the right, and the team needed to make repairs to the toe of his No. 8 Chevrolet; he could muster a 27th-place finish. Keselowski and Blaney officially ended their races, finishing 36th and 37th.

Atlanta’s 22-Car pileup that shut down half the field

On lap 69 of the June race at Atlanta Motor Speedway, Denny Hamlin made contact with John Hunter Nemechek. The incident led Nemechek to hit the outside wall, which then triggered a massive crash. It involved over 20 cars, driven by notable names such as Brad Keselowski, Ryan Preece, Joey Logano, and Kyle Larson.  Joey Logano, who started from the pole, could not continue. He described the wreck: “Cars were sideways and you hit the brakes, and everyone is just running into each other. Just a speedway wreck. Wrong place at the wrong time. Tried to win the stage, and we couldn’t get that done.”

The aftermath was scary. Tire smoke and pieces of carbon fiber went up in the air. The track was blocked by the wrecked cars, prompting NASCAR to halt the race and clear the wreckage. The affected drivers were taken to the infield care center for a checkup.

Zane Smith’s violent Kansas impact that sent his car spinning into the wall

Chase Elliott dominated the headlines at the Kansas race in September. But his victorious celebration could not come before a chaotic wreck. In the first two-lap overtime restart, Zane Smith’s car slid on its side along the Kansas Speedway backstretch wall before flipping twice and landing on its wheels. John Hunter Nemechek made contact with Smith, and as the latter hit the wall, his car turned on its side.

“It was a wild ride, no doubt,” Zane Smith said. “Before I knew it, I had a decent restart going, and I just got wrecked by [Nemechek]. He just drives through me, and then I was sliding on the wall. I was just mad at that point from how our day was going, and this just pissed me off even more because that’s what really hurt was just flipping down the track. It was violent, no doubt.”

As a result of the wreck, which resembled Ryan Preece’s Daytona crashes, NASCAR halted the race for about nine minutes. The sport’s safety team made sure that Smith was okay and checked the wall and fencing. There was a small gouge in the track from where Smith’s roof hit during the flip, but there was no damage to the fence.

Talladega playoff pileup involving Elliott, Burton, and Berry

Talladega lived up to its notorious name twice this year. On lap 52 of the playoff race at the Alabama oval, Erik Jones pushed Noah Gragson around and into AJ Allmendinger, racing for the lead. Chase Elliott went low to avoid the Turn 3 wreck from 19th but was contacted by Daniel Suárez from behind and suffered heavy damage. In total, nine different drivers were involved in the incident, including Justin Haley, Ricky Stenhouse Jr., and Austin Cindric.

Chase Elliott, a two-time Talladega winner, could not continue in the 188-lap event, finishing 40th. This probably became the cause of his missing the 2025 Cup title. Allmendinger’s No. 16 Kaulig Racing Chevrolet caught on fire after contacting the outside wall, coming to a stop at the exit of Turn 4. The 43-year-old exited his car and briefly lay on the ground before walking to an ambulance. Allmendinger, along with the others, was checked and released from the care center.