CONCORD, N.C. – The most harrowing moment of Saturday night’s portion of the United Rentals Patriot Nationals at The Dirt Track at Charlotte came during time trials, when Parker Price-Miller lost a wheel and flipped in the third turn.
Luckily Price-Miller was able to climb from his car and walk away from the crash unscathed, though his participation was scratched for the remainder of the night.
“The car is junk after that one,” he noted upon his arrival back to the pit area.
Price-Miller waited to see a replay of the incident before detailing what he felt from inside the car, but said he had “absolutely no warning” before he started tumbling through the corner.
“I just went into turn three, turned the car, heard a snap, and then the motor revved up and that was all she wrote after that,” Price-Miller told SPEED SPORT. “When you’re going that fast, you just don’t want to hit the wall with the cage open that hard. There’s been a lot of issues like that in the past few years and injuries … but I just closed my eyes and hoped for the best.
“It wasn’t that bad of a wreck,” he added. “We just kind of hit in a few of the wrong spots … hit the top of the cage and it caved the cage in, but I’m OK and I’ll be good to take on Mansfield in a week.”
Price-Miller’s flip called to mind several rule changes announced last August designed with driver safety in mid, including a major addition to the roll cage and rules requiring a steel left-front radius rod, the strengthening of the wing posts, and the nerf bars being mounted with three points.
The roll cage changes made a difference, according to Price-Miller.
“I’m just glad we didn’t have to experience any injuries or that major cage-to-wall type of a hit like some others have gone through in the past few years,” said Price-Miller. “My MAXIM Chassis held up really well, and I can’t thank them enough for good race cars.
“Obviously these support systems have made a difference, because I hit with the cage pretty hard and it didn’t collapse, so that’s a good thing.
Though he wasn’t too enthusiastic about it, Price-Miller did say that occasionally, crashes like the spill he took are necessary to make sure that safety swings as big as the one that the sprint car industry took before the start of this season are ones that pay off by keeping drivers safer than ever before.
“You’ve got to have tests like that to see if we’re going the right direction for safety; you just hate any time you become the test dummy and, unluckily, I was the test dummy tonight,” he pointed out. “But it happened, we’re OK and we’ll go on to race another day.
“These cars are safe and I’m thankful to have walked away from that one.”