A June 2023 wreck left stock car driver Clint Wendel with a broken back. One year later he returned to the seat of a race car at Deer Creek Speedway in Spring Valley, Minnesota.
“I was in a deep, dark place,” Wendel, of Mason City, Iowa. “After the crash, I wondered if I would ever get better again. Then my dad, Harold, died. Nothing is scarier than the unknown. If it weren’t for friends and family, I would not have survived.”
Wendel credited his wife, Kirsten, son Hunter and daughter Hailee for their support. His friend Rick Ackerman encouraged his comeback to racing, helping him get back into the shop. While on the mend, Wendel was out from work as a truck driver and sold classic cars from his collection to make ends meet.
The crash, which occurred at Hancock County Speedway in Britt, Iowa, left him with two fractured vertebrae, leaving him unable to drive for a year. Wendel endured excruciating pain.
“The vertebrae were poking through my spinal cord,” said Wendel. “As they healed, they aligned themselves back up.”
He had raced for 34 years, but never had a wreck as bad as the one in Britt.
“I went into the third turn at Britt hard and the right-rear wheel of my car dug into a soft spot,” Wendel said. “My car went into barrel rolls, 15 feet into the air, and landed on its roof.”
It wasn’t the first time his B&B Racing Chassis stock car had a crash like that.
“Later I learned something spooky,” said Wendel. “When the car was new, it rolled wildly at Bristol Motor Speedway, when they covered it in dirt, back in 2021. It was a horrible crash. I feel that the car was possessed.”
When the car landed on its halo at Hancock County Speedway, it did so with such force that the track crew hauled in clay to fill the hole it made.
“I was in bad shape — I couldn’t move — I had a concussion and a broken back,” Wendel said. “The in-car camera showed I came up out of the seat enough to hit my head on the halo bar. The impact bent both the front and back of the halo downward, absorbing the impact and saving my life, I feel.”
Wendel sat in a Kirkey full-containment seat, with a Crow Safety Gear five-point harness. He wore a Bell Dominator helmet paired with a HANS device.
While on the mend, Wendel met with B&B Racing Chassis’ Paul Burger to order a new car.
“Paul and Kelly Shryock called me with concern about how the belts were mounted and what angle they were at on the previous stock car,” said Wendel. “I was impressed on how much they cared.”
Clint Wendel returned to the seat of a race car at Deer Creek Speedway. Soon after that, the IMCA Speedway Motors Super Nationals at Boone Speedway.
“It felt like home — I missed racing,” Wendel said. “Being out of a race car was torture. That was mental pain, and I still had physical pain to deal with. Being a race driver is who I am.”
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.
