Opening night at Jennerstown turned scary pretty quick. Chris Brink’s throttle stuck wide open, sending his car over the wall and into the darkness. Though crashes in races are common in NASCAR, no one in attendance was really prepared for this one.

The local late model series opener was already eventful. Within the opening lap, Heat Race winner Jeff Giles went into the wall. But Brink’s incident eclipsed everything. The race turned from exciting to frightening within a second, his car climbing the wall, going over it, and disappearing off the track.

It was rather unsettling for the fans assembled there. It is hard to claim if something like this has happened in local racing, but it certainly does not take away the fact that it was one of the scariest wrecks the fans had to experience. Moreover, it was odd coming from Brink.

He is well-experienced, both in racing and on the track, having won here multiple times, including last year, when he won the feature race. It was odd to see the crash, almost like he had no brakes. When he revealed the issue, however, it made sense.

“The throttle hung wide open, and I’ve never had that happen in all the years I’ve raced. And, you know, you’ve got about one second to react. I hit the wall wide open, still digging, and even when it went over the wall and ended up back on its wheels, it was still running wide open,” he said. “That was a hard hit.”

The 0.5-mile track requires the drivers to slow down quite a bit before making the corner; however, with his throttle stuck to the floor, Brink couldn’t do it. The short walls couldn’t contain his car within the track, and it flipped outside, fortunately landing back on its wheels.

One of the weirdest issues was the lack of a catch fence on turn four. These fences usually stop incidents like these from happening; hence, entire speedways in NASCAR are covered with them. Although some fencing could be seen towards the apex of the turn, there was none on the corner entry.

The paramedics arrived on time, and Brink looked okay after getting out of the #25. Understandably, after the hard-hitting impact, the fans were worried.

NASCAR fans worried after a hard-hitting crash

“Scary.  Hope he’s okay.” While most of the wrecks in NASCAR’s national-level races are far worse than the one Chris Brink had to go through, they remain on the track. A car ‘jumping’ out of the track and landing in the darkness is unprecedented, and the unfamiliarity with the kind of crash scared many. But there was also a positive aspect to this.

“He was actually lucky to climb the wall. Didn’t come to a dead stop.” The nimble car and the short wall turned out to be the saving formula for Brink. If the wall had been any taller or more rigid, Brink would have hit it head-first, causing massive damage. In an infamous example, it was a similar impact that claimed the life of NASCAR legend Dale Earnhardt at Daytona in 2001. But because he turned over to the wall, it absorbed most of the car’s momentum, and landing back on his wheels saved Brink from any major injuries.

“Local short track racing shouldn’t exist. This is embarrassing.” Read another comment. This could be understood in two ways: the lack of experience and the lack of funding. Inexperienced drivers tend to make mistakes sometimes, resulting in unfamiliar crashes. But this wasn’t a ‘skill issue’ for Brink. He’s a proven race-winner. A lack of funding for short racing facilities, proper infrastructure around the track (a catch fence), and the poor engineering of the car resulted in the wreck.

At the same time, considering that Brink looked safe and stable, some of the fans managed to find some humor within the situation, with one of the comments reading, “Hey, you can’t park there!” This was seemingly an attempt at the British meme ‘You can’t park there, sir!’

At the end of the day, the incident with Chris Brink only revealed that there’s still a lot that needs to be done to improve the overall safety standards in NASCAR, especially the lower tiers of racing. But it was once again fortunate that the situation played out well and Brink was completely safe.