While superspeedways such as Daytona and Talladega have the “Big One,” the IMCATV Winter Nationals wasn’t without theirs, and Elijah Zevenbergen might have gotten the worst of it. His stock car turned over at Central Arizona Raceway.
“It was ugly,” Zevenbergen, of Allendorf, Iowa, said. “There were a lot of drivers not lifting. People just started piling up.”
Elijah Zevenbergen said he was in eighth place among 30 cars, with four to go, in Thursday’s feature, when the calamity happened.
“A couple of cars got together, and then a couple of drivers trying to avoid crashing cut tires as they spun and hit other cars,” said Zevenbergen. “The cars just kept accumulating. It was a snowball effect.”
Uninjured, Zevenbergen exited his car under his own power and before the track crew righted it. He sat in a full-containment seat from The Joie of Seating, with belts from Hooker Harness. Zevenbergen wore a Zamp helmet paired with a HANS device.
His home-built Chevelle-based stock car, however, didn’t fare as well.
“It is pretty messed up,” Zevenbergen said on Friday morning as his crew hastily worked to get it back into race shape. “It’s a chassis we’re experimenting with. A lot of bolt-on parts are damaged–the entire body, all the bumpers and rub rails, and the steering components–just to name a few things. We plan to be ready to race tonight.”
Competing against a field of 55 cars, Elijah Zevenbergen made it to the A-feature on Friday and Saturday. He finished those nights 20th and 24th, respectively. Zevenbergren, a five-time Dakota Classic Tour stock car champ and USRA national champ, hoped for better results during the IMCATV Winter Nationals at Central Arizona Raceway.
“Been in some violent rolls, but nothing like this one,” said Zevenbergen. “This was a Talladega-style high-speed pileup.”
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.
