Close Calls: NASCAR Drivers Recall Victory Celebrations Nearly Gone Wrong

For anyone who saw it live or saw the highlight, it’s pretty hard not to forget the Connor Zilisch fall from the car in Victory Lane following his win at Watkins Glen. Zilisch, who lost his footing as the window net was on the window sill, was briefly knocked out and he broke his collarbone, keeping him out of the Cup race the next day. He jokes about it now — he told me just last Saturday that, “Hopefully this time around, I can win and not fall of my car in Victory Lane” – and that any celebrations will be different. “I feel like I’ve learned my lesson there,” Zilisch said. “If I do that again, we’ve got big issues.” There have been some other notable injuries in Victory Lane. Brad Keselowski once cut his hand when a champagne bottle broke. FOX Sports analyst Kevin Harvick said he never had an accident in victory lane and had one plea in the Zilisch aftermath: “I would tell everybody to not worry about that one fall. Keep celebrating. Don’t get bland on us and boring.” We asked several Cup drivers earlier this year that in light of Zilisch’s return to Watkins Glen, if they have ever hurt themselves in a victory celebration. Here are some of the answers: AJ Allmendinger: “The Celsius can spike [jumping] off the side of the car, I’m not going to lie, I’m getting old, really old, so it hurts when I land. But I haven’t come that close to injuring myself, just making myself more sore than I need to be.” Christopher Bell: “It’s actually pretty incredible that it doesn’t happen more times. You watch people stand on the cars and they look wobbly. And I’m sure I look wobbly, too, but I’ve never fallen off. But I promise you, I’ve done my last standing on the door.” Ryan Blaney: “There was a couple of moments where I got on the roof of the car and just had to get my footing fast.” Alex Bowman: “With my lack of coordination, I’m surprised that I haven’t. It should have happened to me already. I guess I don’t win enough to get the odds going far enough to slip and fall. But I’m not very coordinated, so I’m surprised that I haven’t.” Chase Briscoe: “I’ve not injured myself but I have fallen off the car before — my first sprint car win, I fell right off. I was standing on the roll bars because it was a non-winged sprint car, and I went to fist pump, and my foot slipped and I fell and landed right on my tailbone. I was bruised up.” Kyle Busch: “I’ve fortunately been pretty lucky that I’ve never had an issue like that. I feel like I slipped one time before I got all the way up — my foot slipped off the door, so my hand was still on the roof, so I caught myself. You’ve got to be really careful because those door tops aren’t very wide.” Cole Custer: I’ve done similar to what Connor did. I fell off the car at Kentucky after an Xfinity race that I won and at Homestead, I fell on the roof of the thing. Honestly, we were all thinking of Connor a lot during that moment. It was a nasty fall. It’s one of those things you do have to pay attention a little bit. Austin Dillon: “It does get slippery. You just have to be a little bit of an athlete when you’re getting out of the car sometimes. You never want that to happen. My closest thing would have been the scorpion I did at Nashville when I tried to slide on the grass, and I think it knocked the breath out of me. I threw up in the truck afterwards. No one saw it because I covered the in-car camera with the checkered flag.” Ty Gibbs: “I haven’t, but I probably been really way closer than I think. I did fall on my back after Atlanta. I jumped out of the car, and I fell, like, flat on my ass. But I just played it off. I just sat there for a second with my helmet on.” Todd Gilliland: “I’ve never been close personally, but being friends with Connor, that was definitely very scary to watch. I think the whole industry, it makes you really think about, getting out and kind of where your window net is. And even the rest of the year, I think everybody was watching everybody get out of the car a little bit closer. Carson Hocevar: “I’ve gotten close to that, I was at a late model race, and my foot did exactly what his did — it slid in the door, and I halfway fell, and I was facing outward, and I did the exact same thing as him. I just didn’t fall. But my foot did fall down. I slipped on the window net and everything. So when I saw that, I realized how close I probably was to knocking myself out pretty good. But it only made him faster, I felt like, once he came back.” Kyle Larson: “Even when I’ve won USAC midget races or sprint races. I don’t do the cage stand. I just stand up in my seat because I don’t want to lose my balance — because you’d be falling from a lot higher than he did.” Tyler Reddick: “I think on one hot summer day, I may have enjoyed one too many beverages in Victory Lane and turned as pale a ghost. But that’s about it. I probably just did some damage to my liver.” Zane Smith: “I have about done that in the truck series a few times, actually. I think it was at COTA once our truck caught on fire (from tire rubber), I didn’t go into, like, a panic, but it just caught my attention, and I turned awkwardly and almost fell. So thankfully I didn’t.” Ricky Stenhouse Jr.: “I have not come close to injuring myself in a victory celebration. … When I did climb the fence at the [Daytona] 500, it was starting to go over. I didn’t almost fall, but I looked down and the way the track is angled. I’d like to see how high I actually was in the air. It was pretty high.” Daniel Suarez: “When you win a race, there is so much adrenaline, and there is so much energy that at that moment, you think that you’re Superman. That’s why you see drivers climbing fences, climbing cars, climbing all these different things. And we think that we’re invincible. And the reality is that we’re still human and actually a little bit tired. I have never had a close call, but I’m actually quite surprised that doesn’t happen more often, because we do a lot of crazy things after we win races.” Bubba Wallace: “If you look at Indy, it took me a second because I stood on the slope part of the roof and I kept stumbling backwards. But I think I have just one more percent of athleticism in my body than Connor’s, and I was able to hold myself. So we’re good.”