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LUCKY RACERS, UNLUCKY RACE CARS
The IHRA Spring Nationals were interrupted by three major accidents,
but all three drivers escaped with little more than bruised bodies,
egos, and checkbooks.
During Friday’s Night of Fire Pro Mod qualifying, Randy Boler
took the evening’s title a little too literally. His 1963 Corvette
flipped over after a squirrelly launch and slid on its roof almost the
length of the quarter mile before a small fire broke out, licking the
sides of the car until track workers put it out. Unhurt, Boler quickly
crawled from the wreck and later considered trying to make a pass on
Saturday, but the damage proved too great and he withdrew.
On Saturday morning, in just her second or third time in a new car,
Pro Outlaw driver Karen Haddock, from Shallotte, N.C., stuffed it into
the wall just past the finish line. Haddock was on and off the throttle
most of the way down the track, with her Chevy-powered dragster fishtailing
wider and wider in the left lane until it finally rolled on its side
and slid into the right guardwall, almost head on. She then violently
snap-rolled several times before coming to rest back in the lane she
started from. Almost miraculously, Shaddock also emerged unscathed,
but her brand-new car was practically a write-off.
SPIESS TAKES A SPILL, FUTURE UNCERTAIN
Darlington’s Pro Stock winner Steve Spiess provided a different
kind of drama Sunday afternoon at Rockingham in his semi-final match
against eventual race winner Jerry Yeoman. As the two cars crossed the
finish line, the chutes blossomed behind Yeoman’s Firebird as expected,
but the Monte Carlo in the right lane rocketed past, then made a hard
left turn and went airborne into the top of the left guardwall. The
impact tore the entire front clip off Spiess’ car and flung his
engine over the wall, where it started a small grass fire.
The car then spun around and hit the right wall, shedding parts as
it crashed, while Yeoman dodged debris before stopping near the wreck
and helping Spiess escape his harnesses. Spiess refused medical treatment
at the scene because, “I could tell I was okay,” he said.
Yeoman said the only injury he could see was a small cut on Spiess’
forehead, but the stricken driver insisted he cut it on something while
climbing into the car.
“I had no warning whatsoever,” Spiess said of his crash.
“The back end just lifted up and the car just started flying. There
was nothing I could do.” He said he may be able to rebuild his
car in time for the next race, or he may borrow Greg Moser’s spare
Olds Cutlass, the same car Chris Holbrook borrowed for the Rockingham
race.
“We’ll have to talk about it first, though,” Spiess
said as he slipped an arm around his wife while crew members picked
through his shattered race car. “This is the third one of these
(serious accidents) I’ve had, so we’ll have to talk about
it first.”
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