Image courtesy: ADRL.us

It was a long, trying weekend for the ADRL racers, officials, and safety crews as a plethora of nasty incidents occurred during the postponed Hardee’s Independence Drags VI at Heartland Park Topeka in Topeka, KS. The competition in the ADRL is incredibly tight and the cars and stars of the no-holds-barred series live on the ragged edge of control and unfortunately, accidents are a byproduct of that.

Image credit: Mark Walter/DragStory.com

During Fridays qualifying, Pro Extreme star Bubba Stanton had the throttle hang on his gorgeous 1968 Camaro following a 3.84-second, 192 MPH lap and with the brakes locked up, turned immediate left into the guardrail and flipped onto its roof before sliding to a stop in the HPT shutdown area. The car briefly caught fire but Stanton was able to escape unharmed. “It was a pretty wild ride,” Stanton said “I cut the fuel off to kill the motor, but the brakes locked up. Everything happened at one time.”

Image courtesy: ADRL.us

Jason Hamstra’s recent string of brutal luck continued this weekend, with a nasty impact with the right lane guardrail near half track. His practically brand new ’68 Camaro shook the tires and before Hamstra could reign it in, got up on two wheels and headed straight for the wall, ricocheting and hitting the left side guardrail further downtrack. Hamstra escaped without injury and was done for the weekend, but is reservedly optimistic about making repairs in time for the next event in Houston in three weeks. “I’m sore but I’m okay,” Hamstra said. “My knee hurts a little. I must have hit something in the car.”

Hamstra was making the first pass on the car since replacing the front end after the original was blown off the car at the last race in Martin, MI. He also suffered a violent crash at last years ADRL World Finals in Dallas that destroyed the teams’ ’68 Camaro.

Image courtesy: ADRL.us

On Saturday, Billy Glidden, one of the most renowned and natural drivers in all of drag racing, experienced an incredibly rare incident in his Extreme 10.5 2010 Ford Mustang after an undetermined parts failure sent his car out of control and into the opposite guardrail, overturning on to its roof in front of opponent Dan Saitz. The damage was largely confined to the front end and the cars’ roof and while repairable, is a huge blow to the fan-favorite Glidden team that has made no bones about their tight racing budget. Said Glidden, “We’re in the same boat as a lot of people. This is a setback and it is not something we can easily recover from. We don’t have the funding to make up for this.” Glidden nearly got the car stopped before striking the wall around the 300’ marker and turning shiny side down.

During Friday evenings third round of qualifying, Pro Extreme racers Aaron Wells and Jim Roberts made hard contact with one another after Wells’ Mustang made a quick move toward the centerline a couple hundred feet out and collected Roberts’ Mustang, sending Roberts into the wall and causing extensive damage to both cars.

Nobody ever wants to see racers experience unfortunate and devastating incidents such as these, but even moreso in these tough economic times where just getting to the race track is enough is enough of a financial struggle. Luckily however, each of these competitors walked away and will be back to compete another day, which is great news for the ADRL and its legion of fans.

Saturday ended early before eliminations could be completed as the rain rolled through Topeka.  The make-up will be at the next ADRL stop.