Best friends Louden Reimert (16) and Brett Bieber (32) collided on the white-flag lap while fighting for the lead. It occurred during the Slingshot feature of the Indoor Auto Racing Championship’s Allentown Indoor Race at the PPL Center in Pennsylvania.
The racers from Oley, Pennsylvania have a history going back to their younger days.
“Brett’s mom babysat me since I was just a toddler,” Reimert said. “Brett is like my big brother.”
Bieber passed polesitter Reimert for the lead on the first lap. Then, that “sibling rivalry” began percolate throughout the 20-lap feature.
“I was frustrated with myself,” said Reimert. “When his car started to push coming off of the fourth turn with five laps to go, I tried to put myself in a spot where I could capitalize on his car’s shortcoming. Coming into three on the white-flag lap, I got a nose under him.”
Then, Reimert’s car hopped as he went through the turn.
“Brett was on the outside, and he cut down quicker than I thought [he would],” Reimert said. “I had no time to react.”
Both crashed out before the checkers, lending the lead, and the win, to Brian Smith.
“I’d rather have someone punch me in the face than wreck my good buddy,” said Reimert. “I first saw Brett’s dad, Shawn, and apologized to him. I felt so bad. Brett pushed his car from the infield with the chain off because of the crash. I walked out [to Brett] and said I was sorry.”
Bieber couldn’t get mad at his friend.
“The worst part about it is that neither one of us got the win,” Bieber said. “If it wasn’t me winning, I would want it to be him. I had brake fade at the end of the race. I knew he was going to be a little quicker. He had a run on me through the corner in turn three; he tried to shoot it in there. Then, we collided. When I saw it was him, I couldn’t be mad.”
Making Louden Reimert feel even worse was the fact that Brett Bieber helped Reimert on his modified throughout the season.
(For more on Reimert, read “Louden Reimert: Winless to Winning Champ”.)
“We only race together a few times a year, and I hate that this happened,” said Reimert. “It was 98% my fault, and 2% a racing deal. They could have been extremely angry with me.”
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.
