Late model driver Gary Kilbourn said this wreck was the wildest in his 15 years of racing. It occurred during hot laps during the Sooner Late Model Series visit to Enid Speedway in Oklahoma.
“I was coming out of the second turn when the green light lit up,” Kilbourn, of Hutchinson, Kansas, said. “I got on the gas, the car got loose, I tried to correct it, and it went left, then right and into the wall. All I could see was concrete before my face as I went twice over.”
The accident did not seriously injure Kilbourn.
“I had some swelling in my right hand after the crash,” said Kilbourn. “I did not let go of the steering wheel because I was trying to save the car.”
Kilbourn sat in a full-containment seat from Ultra Shield Race Products, with an Impact five-point harness. He wore a Bell helmet, with a NecksGen head-and-neck restraint.
“I’ve had a few wrecks, but none like this one,” Kilbourn said. “This was a chassis-ending wreck.”
Gary Kilbourn deemed his car, a 2015 from Swartz Race Cars, destroyed. It only had three races on it. As of Monday, he was stripping the car to see what he could salvage. Not even the engine came out of the crash unscathed.
“We have to disassemble the engine,” Kilbourn said. “The valve covers were ripped open and some dirt got inside the engine. We’ve got a few weeks of work ahead of us.”
Once Kilbourn takes apart his wrecked race car, he’ll begin rebuilding his old 2009 Swartz Race Cars late model. He hopes to return to competition in the Sooner Late Model Series, which tours tracks in Arkansas, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas. Their next event is in two weeks, on April 15, when they visit Thunderbird Speedway in Muskogee, Oklahoma.
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.
