Freddie Carpenter took off to the skies after his late model made contact with Josh Rice’s. They were battling for second at Atomic Speedway in Waverly, Ohio.
“I thought I was on my way to the moon,” said Carpenter, 49, of Parkersburg, West Virginia. “In turns three and four, [Rice] did a slide job on me, so I crossed over and rubbed him slightly. When we got to turn one, he retaliated by giving me a nudge in the door.”
Carpenter’s car went up on the track, hooked the cushion, flipped through the air, and then barrel-rolled to land on all fours.
“The crash ranks up there as one of my worst — and I’ve been racing late models for 22 years,” Carpenter said. “The car was reduced to junk — a total loss.”
While the car didn’t survive, Carpenter did, although albeit a bit beat up.
“I’ve been sore and I have a concussion — I’ve had one before so I know when I have one,” said Carpenter. “I’m not 100% yet.”
For his ride to the sky, Carpenter used a car built out of his shop, Kryptonite Racecars. He sat in an Ultra Shield Race Products full-containment seat, with an Impact five-point harness, and he wore a Simpson Hybrid head-and-neck restraint system, with an Impact helmet.
Freddie Carpenter finished 18th in the 20-car field. Rice placed 15th after officials sent him to the rear for contact with Carpenter’s car. R.J. Conley, of Wheelersburg, Ohio, won the $3,022-to-win feature.
After race ended, a fracas in the pits ensued from the incident.
“Nobody left my pits and nobody left [Rice’s] trailer,” Carpenter said. “That group argument was just a big bunch of passionate race fans discussing what they saw.
“Josh would never intentionally send me out of the park. I’m not upset with him. We’re okay with each other.”
Mike Adaskaveg has written hundreds of stories since the website’s inception. This year marks his 54th year of covering auto racing. Adaskaveg got his start working for track photographer Lloyd Burnham at Connecticut’s Stafford Motor Speedway in 1970. Since then, he’s been a columnist, writer, and photographer, in racing and in mainstream media, for several outlets, including the Journal Inquirer, Boston Herald, Stock Car Racing, and Speedway Illustrated. Among Adaskaveg’s many awards are the 1992 Eastern Motorsport Press Association (EMPA) Ace Lane Photographer of the Year and the 2019 National Motorsports Press Association (NMPA) George Cunningham Writer of the Year.
