On November 18, 2018, Joey Logano bested the Big 3 of Kevin Harvick, Kyle Busch, and Martin Truex Jr. to win his first NASCAR Cup Series championship. Logano's thrilling victory at the Ford EcoBoost 400 was considered somewhat of an upset, since the Team Penske driver (despite ultimately racking up three wins, 13 top-five finishes, 26 top-10 finishes by the season's end) wasn't getting nearly as much coverage as Harvick, Busch, and Truex.
With that in mind, Logano's banner day at Homestead-Miami Speedway was pretty much all anyone in the NASCAR community was talking about in the days that followed. I say pretty much, because there was one incident before the race even began that did manage to grab some headlines, and it involved one seriously unlucky skydiver.
The unfortunate skydiving routine — which was part of a pre-race ceremony that included fireworks, an Air Force-led rendition of the Star-Spangled Banner, and a flyover from the 93rd Fighter Squadron from Homestead Air Reserve Base — ended in disaster after a gust of wind caused the diver to miss his drop zone and get tangled up in Homestead's catchfence.
Needless to say, since the landing spot was supposed to be in the grass on the inside of the track, this clearly wasn't the outcome that the ill-fated skydiver had drawn up. Thankfully, he didn't sustain any injuries, and a safety crew was able to untangle him before the race started, but the embarrassment had to be off the charts. This definitely isn't the way you want to come off on national television.
It's unclear as to why the skydiver was given the green light to jump in the first place if it was as windy as it appeared, but just like Logano's victory later that day, that gust of wind seemingly came out of nowhere.
