Late model driver Eddie King Jr. has raced more than 30 years and earned more than 200 wins. However, he never hung inside his car upside down until August 2. That’s when his late model overturned during the Dylan Kennedy Memorial at Wartburg Speedway.
Early in the feature, Kyle Courtney came up on King’s late model on the backstretch.
“In the middle of [turns] one and two, I didn’t see anyone alongside me,” King, of Knoxville, Tennessee, said. “Coming out of the turn I went up to try the outside. Our cars came together, and I went into the wall. My car had a broken spindle — it was a sitting duck on the racetrack with no steering.”
Then what happened next resulted in King taking a ride to the hospital.
“[Fellow late model driver] Jason Trammell told me he hit me at full throttle — I don’t remember it,” said King. “I remember hanging upside-down. The first thing I did was undo my belts.”
EMTs thought King may have incurred a punctured lung, so an ambulance rushed him to the hospital.
“It turned out to be bad bruising,” King said, “and I caused some of it by releasing my belts.”
King said he was upside-down for just four minutes, and the track crew rushed to his aid.
“It felt like an hour to me,” said King. “The impact had hurt my ribs, and I was in pain. When I undid my belts, I fell to the ceiling. I did not have a protocol for getting out of a race car that was upside-down.
“The EMTS were trying to drag me out of the car, but I forgot to take the steering wheel off, so they pushed me back in. I was struck with a sense of helplessness. Everything went wrong.”
King sat in an Ultra Shield full-containment seat, with Simpson belts. He wore a Zamp helmet.
“I didn’t have my HANS device on,” King said. “And my wife is pretty upset about that.”
King raced a brand-new Longhorn late model that Scott and Nicole Hickman purchased for their son Chandler. King was tasked to shake the car down and mentor Chandler. They will send the car back to Longhorn’s North Carolina headquarters through local dealer Longhorn by Skinny.
“The car took a licking but did not appear to be bent that badly,” said King. “I felt bad that I wrecked the Hickmans’ car. They just wanted the car to be in winnable condition. They gave me the best stuff money can buy to drive. Hopefully, it will be as good as new again.”
Trammell and Courtney both checked in on Eddie King Jr. since the crash.
“Jason was joking about us being too old to race,” King, 52, said. “I know the time is coming for me to hang it up. I can’t go out like this — I want to go out winning and hand the keys to Chandler.”
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.
