Dr. Diandra: Avoiding accidents at superspeedways is more art than science

Avoiding accidents is a top priority for every driver in Saturday’s regular-season-ending race (7 p.m. ET on NBC and Peacock) at Daytona International Speedway.

But there’s no scientific way to do it.

In 2021, 136 caution-causing accidents and spins involved 263 cars in the Cup Series. The four superspeedway races accounted for 17 accidents, which is 12.5% of the season total.

Accidents at those four races, however, involved 96 cars. That’s 36.5% of the total number of cars involved in accidents, even though superspeedways made up only 11.1% of the schedule.

When it comes to multi-car accidents, Daytona and Talladega are overachievers.

Between 2001 and 2021, 86 superspeedway races produced 416 accidents involving 1,986 cars. Only 2 of those 86 races went accident-free. Both were at Talladega: the 2001 spring race and the 2002 fall race.

Daytona is slightly more conducive to crashes and spins than Talladega. Daytona averaged 4.93 accidents per race from 2001-2021, while Talladega averaged 3.65.

The most accidents in a single superspeedway race is 12, at the 2011 Daytona 500. Forty-one cars were involved in accidents. That includes cars involved in more than one accident.

While the “Big One” gets the most attention, most superspeedway incidents involve only a few cars.

Of course, it doesn’t matter whether a driver is involved in a huge accident or a small one. There’s no correlation between number of cars involved and damage to the cars.

The most cars involved in a single accident is 26. It’s happened three times: twice at summer Daytona races (in 2014 and 2018), and at the 2005 spring Talladega race.

So far this year, Daytona and Talladega have had nine accidents involving a total of 35 cars. The largest accident