The sportsman of Tim Guild crashed hard into the wall during hot laps on Tuesday. Fortunately, the foam blocks helped dissipate much of the blow at Outlaw Speedway in Dundee, New York.
“I lost the steering at full throttle going into turn one,” Guild, of Rathbone, New York, said. “A bolt came out of the steering arm that we had worked on just a few days before. It either came loose or wasn’t properly tightened. Either way, my crew learned a valuable lesson.”
After the car came into the pits, Guild and his two-man crew went to work. Fortunately, the car, a 2021 Bicknell, incurred little damage.
“I’m glad those foam blocks were there,” said Guild. “They helped lessen the blow. We had to replace the front axle, radius rods, a couple of nuts and bolts. Luckily, I had all those parts with me in the trailer. It pays to be prepared. It could have been a lot worse if those blocks weren’t there.”
Guild himself was not hurt, either. He sat in a Kirkey full-containment seat with a Simpson five-point harness. Guild wore a Zamp helmet with a head-and-neck restraint.
The team got the car back on in time for their heat race, where Guild finished sixth and qualified for the feature.
“The guys jumped right in and started fixing the car,” Guild said. “We knew we only had minutes to prepare for the heat race.”
However, come time for the feature, Tim Guild didn’t make much forward progress. He finished 21st in a feature that started 24 cars.
“I just rode in the back of the pack — I missed the setup,” said Guild. “After a wreck like that, it is hard to get everything right on the fly. We struggled, but at least we finished the race.”
With Outlaw Speedway taking the weekend off, Guild hopes to rebound at New York’s Woodhull Raceway on Saturday.
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.
