Juan Pablo Montoya tops list of bizarre racing collisions—or maybe not

Consider this quote from the 1990 NASCAR racing movie Days of Thunder:


Harry Hogge: All right. While we're still under a caution, I want you to go back out on that track and hit the pace car.

Cole Trickle: Hit the pace car?

Harry Hogge: Hit the pace car.

Cole Trickle: What for?

Harry Hogge: Because you've hit every other goddamned thing out there. I want you to be perfect.


While Juan Pablo Montoya may be the first driver to hit, and destroy, a track's jet dryer, there have been some other peculiar collisions.


Journeyman ARCA driver Joe Cooksey hit the pace car with his race car at Daytona International Speedway under caution. Cooksey's No. 51 car struck a Pontiac Grand Prix pace car; both cars were destroyed, and pace-car driver Jack Wallace afterward said that he had a sore neck.


Similarly, Geoff Bodine once hit the pace car in a NASCAR Nationwide Series race at Charlotte Motor Speedway, also a Pontiac, this time with a new Pontiac Firebird. Mario Andretti once rear-ended an Alfa Romeo safety car at the Molson Indy in Toronto.


And sometimes it's the other way around: If you have forgotten when a Formula One safety car hit driver Taki Inoue, who had climbed from his own car, at the Hungaroring, breaking his leg, you can find it on YouTube.


Read more: http://www.autoweek.com/article/20120228/NASCAR/120229834#ixzz1ngdVeUQ0

And for those wondering how often someone hits the pace car: