You can’t call Lee Hutchinson a quitter. He rolled his friend’s sport compact during practice, but that didn’t stop him. Hutchinson then flipped the same car, the same day during a last chance qualifier. He was not hurt in either incident during the Winter Freeze at the Screven Motor Sports Complex.
The man also known as the “Tint Man” builds sports compacts and he constructed two late last summer. One for Heath Oestricher and the other for himself. Well, that was the intent.
“I sold my car to a guy in New York who just had to have it,” Hutchinson, of Prattville, Alabama, said. “I couldn’t refuse a customer’s money, but that left me to be a carless car builder.”
With no time to build another car for the Ice Bowl at the Talladega Short Track, Oestricher loaned him his. Hutchinson qualified into the field among a field of 64 entries. He started 18th and finished third. Oestricher then asked him to drive at Screven. There, during practice, Hutchinson hit a deep rut between turns three and four.
“I went up on two wheels — I tried to counter steer,” Hutchinson said. “It was too little, too late. The car already had too much momentum and did a cartwheel through the turn.”
Hutchinson walked away unscathed. He wore a Zamp helmet paired with a Simpson Hybrid head-and-neck restraint. Hutchinson sat in a Kirkey full-containment seat with RaceQuip belts.
The car, however, needed extensive work. He called on friend Eddie McGrew to use his flatbed wrecker in the pits.
“The front frame horns were bent 3 inches out to the passenger side,” Hutchinson said. “We used Eddie’s flatbed and winches to straighten the car back up. We also had to replace a broken axle.”
Hutchinson then competed in a heat race, a B-main and then the last chance qualifier. During the LCQ, between turns one and two, he took to the air again.
“I had a little help getting pointed to the wall,” Hutchinson said. “The dirt berm acted like a ramp up to the wall, turning me sideways and we went tumblin.’”
The wreck added insult to injury, with bent frame horns now in the rear, too.
“It’s less than three weeks to the SCDRA $15,000-to-win race at Penton Raceway,” Hutchinson said. “I have no time to build my own car. Now, I will have to rebuild Heath’s. Fortunately, he wants to give me another chance behind the wheel. We will have a two-car team for that race — my son Gauge in his car and me in Heath’s car. Two chances to win $15,000!”
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.
