Even people who don’t follow big-league stock car racing sat up and took notice when they saw the video replay of Ryan Newman’s spectacular crash in this year’s Daytona 500. Then a couple of days later I expect they were surprised, like I was, to see him walk out of the hospital where he had been treated for his injuries.
Seeing Newman reminded me of a seminar I attended in Daytona years ago in which retired driver NASCAR Buddy Baker, then a TV commentator, addressed attendees.
I was in Daytona during NASCAR’s SpeedWeeks because from 1990 to 2001 I handled public and media relations for NASCAR’s All-Star series, a Midwest-based late model dirt track touring series.
Along with other NASCAR field representatives, I was invited to Daytona Beach every February to fraternize with NASCAR promoters from around the country and attend meetings and training sessions.
Baker told us he was mentoring a young race driver from Indiana destined to get into Cup racing. He said the driver had talent, that we’d hear about him in the future and his name was Ryan Newman.
Baker, who in 1998 was named by NASCAR one of its 50 greatest drivers, also related a racing incident in which he was involved. I think, because it has a happy ending, it’s one of racing’s funniest stories ever.
Baker told us about the time he fell out of an ambulance at Smoky Mountain Raceway. I had read the hilarious true story earlier in a book about racing. In the late 1960s, Baker said, he had agreed to make a personal appearance and race at the dirt track run by a friend, Don Naman. During the race, Baker crashed hard into a wall and broke some ribs.
He said the ambulance crew showed up in an old Pontiac ambulance at his demolished car and strapped him onto a stretcher. Then they loaded him into the ambulance, and the driver drove up the track’s banking to exit through a gate.
But there was a problem. The medics, who apparently were either inept or nervous or both, had not locked the stretcher, which was on wheels, to the floor of the ambulance. They also had failed to tightly latch the rear door of the ambulance.
As the ambulance went up the track’s banking, the back door flew open and Baker, strapped to the stretcher, rolled out onto the backstretch of the track. The stretcher spun around and around as it rolled down the banking.
In the meantime the field of race scars, still under the caution flag, coming out of turn two, was approaching Baker.
Baker, strapped tight, told us he was able to work one arm free, hold it up in the air and wave it frantically at the approaching drivers. They went either side of the stretcher as it rolled toward the infield.
When the stretcher got to the inside of the dirt track, the first two wheels dug into some mud and the stretcher somersaulted. Baker said he ended up face down in the mud, still strapped to the stretcher.
The medics, realizing they had lost their patient, quickly arrived on the scene. They lifted the stretcher back onto its wheels and found Baker covered with mud.
He is quoted as telling them, “When I get off this thing, I’m gonna kill you first.”
