Car builder BJ Wambold (70) sent a spare 4 cylinder to Evergreen Raceway just in case Jared Frye needed it in his quest for the track championship. Jared (75) didn’t wind up using it, so BJ drove it instead, steering it to a feature victory.
It’s not like Jared didn’t have the chance to drive the car, though. BJ offered to swap cars for the feature after BJ ran better than Jared during the heat races.
BJ wanted to help Jared because in 2024 Jared gave his ride to BJ’s daughter, Maggie Wambold. Maggie was entrenched in a points battle with her father. During the last points-paying race of the year, Maggie wrecked Jared’s car and she finished second to BJ in the championship.
BJ had been loaning the car to Jared’s father, Tim Frye. Tim, a past Mahoning Valley Speedway Park champ, drove it a week earlier at Mahoning. Tim intended to take it to Evergreen to qualify it and then park it as a spare for his son. Tim, however, changed his mind and didn’t want to race it at Evergreen.
“I told Tim to just get the car to the track, sign me in and I would be there in time to drive it, which I did,” BJ, of Nazareth, Pennsylvania, said.
BJ started the 18-car feature in seventh. Jared finished third.
“We help each other out,” BJ said. “Jared was there when Maggie needed a car. I offered him what was to be the winning car. Then, I wound up passing him for the lead in the car he could have been driving.”
Jared still maintains a points lead by nine markers, with four more races left in the season. BJ Wambold looks to Evergreen this weekend, hoping to return to victory lane for the second straight week.
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.
