ELLISVILLE, Fla. (May 28) — Jim Rogers of Statesboro, Ga., knew he’d made a mistake, and the results of his miscue were quite spectacular during Memorial Day weekend as the opening segment of the two-day Harvey Jones Memorial took place at All-Tech Raceway. It was a night of action featuring heat races and qualifying, and Rogers perhaps provided a little too much action for his own good.
Attempting to make the field during Boyd-Bilt Fabrication time trials for the Newsome Raceway Parts-sponsored Crate Racin’ USA Dirt Late Model Series event, Rogers’ car rolled up the outside concrete retaining wall, then straddled and rode it for well over 125 feet in a shower of sparks before the car deposited itself on the outside of the retaining barrier between turns one and two.
“I guess I kinda screwed up,” Rogers said. “I should have entered the corner a little higher, but I got in a situation where I had to let the car slide up the racetrack to get where I wanted to be, and I clipped the wall with the right rear of the car. That pulled the front end toward the wall, and it got up on there and rode for a while. I felt pretty helpless, and it seemed like I was up there about two minutes. I had no control at all.”
The good news? No injuries to the driver. Even better, his car wasn’t completely destroyed in the nasty-looking incident.
“We were done for the night, but all it really hurt bad was my pride,” Rogers said. “It was a brand new car. Brian Green of Topnotch Kustom Koncepts picked it up for me earlier this week at Rocket Chassis, and you sure hate to do something like that the first night. The car held up, though. It’s fixable and we’ll be working on it, but at first glance it’s not as bad as you’d think for what happened.”
Rogers has raced for eight seasons, including stints with the National Late Model Series and Southern All Stars Dirt Late Model Series, and it’s definitely not his first rodeo when it comes to spectacular incidents.
He took a brand new car to East Alabama Motor Speedway for the Bama Bash about three or four years ago, and barrel-rolled it several times in its first appearance.
“Unfortunately, I’ve actually barrel-rolled four different times during my career,” Rogers said. “That one at EAMS…we had just finished that car. I started racing at 14 years old, but last year we slowed down our appearances because of work-related commitments. This wreck might slow our schedule down, but I was hoping we could race more this year.”