The United Rentals 250 at Talladega turned into a brutal lesson in superspeedway chaos, with a late-race pileup in Turn 1 sending William Sawalich’s No. 18 Toyota slamming into the wall. The Joe Gibbs Racing rookie, caught in a mid-pack melee, took a hard right-rear hit that snapped his car sideways, lifting it briefly before it crashed back down in a haze of smoke and debris.

Safety crews swarmed as the field crept by under caution, and though Sawalich climbed out on his own, he leaned on help, visibly rattled, before heading to a local hospital for checks. The crash, one of the day’s nastiest, stopped the race cold for a red-flag cleanup. Sawalich walked away alert, but the hit’s intensity, a reminder of Talladega’s unforgiving final laps, left a mark on the 19-year-old’s breakout Xfini

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