The chances of continuing to race throughout the night didn’t look good for Parker Guldin as he flipped his sportsman during a heat race. Surprisingly, he made it back out for the consi at Grandview Speedway in Bechtelsville, Pennsylvania.
“After contact with another car inside of mine, my chassis dug into the track and I went over,” said Guldin, 27, of Fleetwood, Pennsylvania. “I flipped in the most perfect, but most scary way, landing upside-down, with the top of the cage on the race surface, which saved my car. However, I was upside-down, hanging by my five-point harness with no way to release the latch. I was worried about leaking fluids causing a fire.”
The track crew quickly rushed to Guldin’s aid.
“The weight of my body against the belts made it impossible for me to unlatch them until I felt two sets of hands pushing me back into the upside-down seat,” Guldin said. “Then, a third set of hands released the hip belt and I was lowered onto the roof. My whole world was turned upside-down and I had to figure out what body parts needed to go where to make an acrobatic move to escape.”
Guldin sat in a Kirkey full-containment seat, with a Simpson five-point harness. He wore a Bell helmet and a Schroth head-and-neck restraint.
“I have bruises on both legs from hitting the steering box,” said Guldin. “My shoulders were sore from the belts digging in as I was hanging upside-down.”
Remarkably, the car’s damage consisted of just a few bent bolts, some bent sheet metal, and a flat tire. Guldin’s father, John, and uncle Dennis made repairs.
“My dad is the backbone of my team,” Guldin said. “After the spill, he and my uncle immediately took the body off. With a lot of duct tape and a handful of zip ties, I was ready for the consi.”
Unfortunately, Parker Guldin failed to qualify for the feature.
“Between the heat race and the consi, the track crew redid the surface of the track,” Guldin said. “The track was gripped up. We missed the setup and my car was falling too hard on the right rear.”
Guldin, who has three wins in the sportsman class since 2019, looks to go for his first in 2023 this Saturday night at Grandview Speedway.
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.
