Nothing was going to stop Jimmy Leiby from finishing up front in his quest for a championship. Not even flipping twice during the second lap of the feature. When the checkered flag waved, he placed fifth in the 24-car field. The charge to the front occurred last Saturday in the sportsman class at Grandview Speedway in Bechtelsville, Pennsylvania.
Leiby flipped while coming into turn three. He saw a car in front of him get turned around. Another car hit the spinning car, which in turn made contact with Leiby’s car.
“I closed my eyes — I saw the yuke tire coming and knew it might hurt when I hit it,” Leiby, of West Milford, New Jersey, said. “When I opened my eyes again, I was upside-down sitting in my car. Gravity is not good when you are upside-down.”
Leiby sat in a Kirkey full-containment seat, with a Crow Safety Gear five-point harness. He wore an Impact Racing helmet and a NecksGen Rev2 head-and-neck restraint. Uninjured, Leiby asked the track crew to turn his car back over with him still in it.
“I never unstrapped,” said Leiby. “The officials told me that everything was straight. They said I lost about a quart of oil and they were worried about fire. I fired my car up and everything was good. The engine sputtered and then cleared. I saw the 10-car pileup caused a red, so I headed to the infield.”
His father, John, then assessed the damage on the car built by Hig Fab Chassis.
“My dad said nothing on the car was damaged except the body panels,” Leiby said. “So, I thought, ‘What have I got to lose?’ [We] decided to get back out there and race as hard as I can.”
Then, John made the necessary repairs to get his son out.
“The roof was pushed down so far I couldn’t see out of that side of the car,” said Leiby. “My dad pushed it out and taped all the body panels down so they would hold. We didn’t want to get black-flagged.”
By electing to stay out, Jimmy Leiby eked out a fifth-place finish. He intends to make a run at the sportsman championship, and nights like this are what creates champions.
“My car is all apart and we’re getting ready for this weekend,” Leiby said. “We have plenty of spare parts. I have the body panels I need to fix my car, but they may be blue instead of yellow. The color doesn’t matter, they will work for us.”
(For more on Jimmy Leiby, read “Jimmy Leiby: Two Features, Two Different Outcomes”.)
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.
