Hobby stock racer Seth Butler seemed set for a great start this season. That is until the feature during the season opener at Stuart International Speedway.
Butler had won his heat race and started the main from the sixth spot. However, lap three changed his season’s trajectory.
“I was having a really fast night,” Butler, of Glidden, Iowa, said. “The track was hooked up. I went into the first turn and the left side of my car lifted — over I went. My car flipped three times in the air and came down pretty hard on its roof.”
His brother Shane raced four cars behind him, getting a startling view of Butler’s wild ride.
“Before I knew it, Shane was out of his car and standing next to mine,” Butler said. “When they rolled my car over with me in the driver’s seat, I could see he was shocked. It all happened right in front of him.”
Fortunately, the wreck did not injure Butler. He sat in a Kirkey full-containment seat, with a RaceQuip five-point harness. Zamp furnished Butler’s helmet and head-and-neck restraint. He drove a hobby stock built by K Chassis. Last year, Butler rolled another car from K Chassis at Revving It Up at Hwy 39 Speedway (formerly Crawford County Speedway).
“I put the older K Chassis out in the tree line on our farm,” Butler said. “I won my first feature with that car in 2022 at Kossuth County Speedway — I won’t get rid of it.”
Butler’s working on returning to hobby stock action.
“We are stripping down the car to its bare chassis,” Butler said. “Then we are taking the chassis over to Dustin Smith [of K Chassis] to see what needs to be done. I came down pretty hard — the front bars and the halo were bent a little bit.”
Shane Butler remains hopeful he’ll continue racing soon.
“My brother and I and our buddies are working hard to put another car together so I can keep racing,” Butler said. “That was by far the worst crash in my 10 years of racing hobby stocks.”
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.
