Emergency personnel prepared Keith Scalia (9) for transport after he took the hardest hit of his career. The incident occurred during a late model feature at the New London-Waterford Speedbowl in Connecticut.
“I was coming out of turn two full-throttle and dove under two cars getting together,” Scalia, 46, North Branford, Connecticut. “Someone got into me, and my car spun into the outside wall, driver’s side first.”
Then, it got worse. Tommy Adams (56) and Jeramee Lillie (3x) piled in, with Adams landing on top of Scalia’s car.
“It all happened in slow motion … until the [initial] impact, which happened fast,” said Scalia. “That is my last memory. I don’t remember the cars piling into me. A few seconds passed, and then I saw there was a car on top of me.”
The track crew rushed to check on Scalia.
“They lowered my safety net and I told them my back was hurting pretty bad,” Scalia said. “They stabilized my neck with a cervical collar. They offered to cut the car, but I told them to first try sliding me out the window. That worked.”
They loaded Scalia on a stretcher and transported him to Lawrence + Memorial Hospital in New London. Scalia had trouble breathing, so they transferred him to Yale New Haven Hospital — the nearest major trauma center. Doctors feared his left lung may collapse.
“I had no pain at all in my head or neck,” said Scalia. “In New Haven they found I had severely bruised ribs on the left side, front and back. My left lung was badly bruised from hitting my ribs. I was in so much pain. I could not walk.”
The crash bent the rear clip of the RB Performance chassis. Scalia sat in a full-containment seat from The Joie of Seating, with a Crow Enterprizes five-point harness. He wore an Impact helmet, with a NecksGen Rev2 head-and-neck restraint system.
“The side impact drove me into the left side of the seat,” Scalia said. “My body bent the left rib protector of the seat outwards.”
Yale New Haven Hospital released Scalia early last week and he continues to recuperate at home. Keith Scalia said his worst wreck prior to this one — a rollover at Monadnock Speedway in New Hampshire a decade ago — taught him the value of quality safety equipment.
“Safety is the most important expense in racing,” said Scalia. “It takes precedence over engines or shocks. If I was in an old-school seat and hit the wall on the driver’s side that hard, I can’t even imagine how the outcome would have been.”
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.
