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Always watch races at Pocono Raceway–whether in person or on television–with special trepidation.

Although not as fast as the superspeedways at Atlanta, Charlotte, Daytona and Talladega, it is a very, very dangerous place. Possibly the most frightening on the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series.

This is because the triangle-shaped, 2.5-mile track in the Pocono Mountains, site of the Pennsylvania 400 on Sunday, has two long straightaways where speed builds breathtakingly. At the end of each are what essentially amounts to 90-degree left turns. And these turns relatively are barely banked compared to other big speedways. The first turn is just 14 degrees, the second turn, also known as The Tunnel Turn, is a narrow, challenging 8 degrees.

Some of NASCAR’s biggest stars have experienced extremely violent crashes, and been hurt, while racing over a tunnel that leads into the infield and the garage area.

The list includes seven-time series champions Richard Petty and Dale Earnhardt, Davey Allison, Harry Gant, Neil Bonnett and Steve Park. Earnhardt, Allison and Bonnett all are deceased.

The career of legendary Bobby Allison, the 1983 champion, and Davey’s father, sadly was brought to an end on June 19, 1988, Father’s Day, when he was involved in a wreck between Turns 1 and 2. Allison spun when his car’s left rear tire went flat on the first lap.

He was hit in the driver’s side door by the following car of Jocko Maggiacomo and suffered critical head and chest injuries that left him hospitalized for five months.

Maggiacomo wasn’t seriously hurt, but never raced again on the big-time NASCAR tour.

Four-time champion Jeff Gordon crashed going into the first turn following a run down the 3,740-foot frontstretch in 2006. His car was destroyed, but Gordon wasn’t badly injured. Some sources say that Gordon’s impact with the wall created a whopping 64 in G-forces. One of the most horrifying incidents near The Tunnel Turn involved a drunken fan. Luckily, he didn’t cause a massive pileup and possibly deadly injuries to drivers in the Champion Spark Plug 500 of 1993. The fan scaled a 6-foot-high wire fence separating the track from the infield. He then jumped over the inside wall and ran onto the racing surface.

For a terrifying second, he froze with Kyle Petty and Davey Allison, battling for the lead, bearing down on him along the 3,065-foot Long Pond Straight. Fans at the track and a national TV audience gasped, the man finally wheeled and dived head-first across the outer wall just before Petty and Allison swept by.

“I came around the first turn and I couldn’t believe what a I saw,” Petty said after winning the race. “He was right in the middle of the race track. I let off the throttle, checked up a little bit, gave a wave to Davey, and he checked up, too.

“I turned left and motioned for Davey to do the same to give the guy a chance to get across the wall. When we got there, his feet were sticking over the wall. Davey was shaking his head. He couldn’t believe it either. “I don’t know how much we missed him, but it wasn’t by much. I wouldn’t have wanted to be that close to a passing car running 55 (mph), much less 160.”

Said an angry Davey Allison: “I’ve never seen anything like that before. I never believed anybody could be that dumb.”

Law enforcement authorities began an immediate search for the culprit, concentrating on a swamp not far away. About three hours later they arrested a 25-year-old man from Elphata, Pa., and charged him with two felonies and five misdemeanors. The felonies: endangering persons and risking a catastrophe; the misdemeanors: criminal mischief, defiant trespass, persistent disorderly conduct, recklessly endangering another person and public drunkenness.

Arraigned the next day, the man admitted to drinking beer since 3 a.m. and taking medication to stay awake. He later was sentenced to prison.

As far as can be determined, this is the only time in NASCAR’s so-called modern era, dating to 1972, that a fan has gone on a track while a race was in progress.

However, there’s a heavy deer population in the Pocono Mountains, and several times whitetails have caused problems by wandering onto the asphalt racing surface at the track there.

Bonnett once struck a deer while practicing at Pocono and returned to the garage area with heavy damage to the grille of his car, where crewman found a leg of the deer, which, of course, was killed.

There have been strange, amusing incidents involving critters at Pocono.

I recall NASCAR and speedway personnel having to stop a race to run down a rabbit near the start/finish line. Ditto, and maybe strangest of all, a rooster that somehow found its way onto the track, appearing just under the flagstand. It was hilarious watching the late Harold Kinder, the flagman and a colorful character, come down from his perch to try and help re-coop that rooster.

During one cold, rainy day at Pocono Raceway, a NASCAR official named Carl Hill was manning a small booth just outside the track near The Tunnel Turn. His duty was to check in the teams as they arrived. Not much was happening that day, and Carl dozed off to sleep. He was awakened by something trying to get in the booth with him.

Carl peeked out to see a LARGE black bear that had come out of the thick forests that surround the track! Hill’s shouts finally scared the critter away. Carl never dozed off again at Pocono before his retirement. In the 1970s there weren’t enough cars at Pocono for a full field. Some rival drivers and crewmen dared the impish, fun-loving driver/car owner James Hylton to see “how slow” he could run a qualifying lap. Hylton went around at about 45 mph. His run seemed to take forever on the big, long track.

His NASCAR peers, standing on the pit wall, cheered in delight as Hylton finally took the checkered flag.

The sanctioning body’s officials weren’t nearly so amused. Hylton was fined several hundred dollars.

Finally, one favorite memory from my many trips to Pocono Raceway as a member of the motorsports media.

None of the competitors were satisfied with the garage area “facilities” at the raceway. Long-time driver Dave Marcis complained loudest and longest and angriest to the track owners, Doctors Rose and Joe Mattioli.

Finally, they built a new, nice “rest area” for the drivers, crews, press and others with access to the garage. And they named it “The Dave Marcis Lounge.”

At first, Dave was not amused, but later laughed about his namesake “potty.”

As at all tracks, there’s excitement, humor and fun to be found at Pocono Raceway. But it’s tempered by the danger.