Port Royal Speedway
For Flinner, racing takes back seat to dad's health
By Kyle McFadden
DirtonDirt.com staff reporter
Mark and Colton Flinner last year at Port Royal. (Christopher Hockley/wrtspeedwerx.com)
PORT ROYAL, Pa. — Colton Flinner is usually one of the busiest racers in the Northeast, making annual trips to Florida-Georgia Speedweeks at the beginning of the year and racing weekly at Lernerville Speedway in Sarver, Pa., and Port Royal Speedway.
But things are entirely — and tenderly — different five months into this season with Flinner’s father, Mark, in the throes of a grim battle with stage IV colon cancer. | RaceWire
The Allison Park, Pa., driver would be fully committed to the revival of Appalachian Mountain Speedweek — an eight-race miniseries right up the reigning Port Royal champion’s alley — but his heart and mind aren’t fully engaged with racing, and empathically so.
“I mean, racing, I’m always going to have that. But I’m only going to have one dad,” said Flinner, whose lone victory this year came May 13 at Hummingbird Speedway in Reynoldsville, Pa. “To possibly lose him is going to be the hardest thing of my life because I’ve been around him since I was a kid. I work with him. We do racing together. He bought me my first go-kart when I was 7 years old. I’ve raced with him every single weekend since I was 7. I’ll be 29 Monday. He’s just a huge part of my life.
“My mind’s not in the racing thing right now because I’m so worried about him. I don’t want to lose him. He’s literally my best friend. He’s all I’ve known my whole life. I’ve been with him everyday since I was a kid. I’m not ready to lose him by any means.”
Flinner doesn’t know much longer his father, a former Late Model racer himself, has left. There is some semblance of hope, however, and doctors haven’t deemed the 58-year-old’s cancer terminal. When Flinner’s father was diagnosed with stage IV colon cancer on Dec. 23 last year, doctors gave him two weeks to live.
Chemotherapy then carried the elder Flinner through the end of March, where “everything was looking good,” Flinner good.
But then Flinner came down with pneumonia to start April, resulting in chemotherapy treatments to be suspended through May. Two months of the rigorous cancer going unchecked by chemotherapy has set Flinner’s father back.
“Right now, it’s really bad. It’s getting worse,” Flinner said. “He was beating it for the longest time.
“Just spending all the time I can right now. (Halting chemotherapy) has made the tumor grow even bigger now and it’s pretty much manifested throughout his body, the cancer. Now we have to hope and pray that a miracle happens and hopefully he heals up and gets better.”
Last Tuesday, Flinner’s father was finally cleared of pneumonia and prescribed chemotherapy pills rather that traditional chemotherapy. Flinner hopes that the prescribed medication arrives by the end of this week so his father can continue to be supplied with what he needs to make another comeback.
Despite this glimmer of hope, Flinner’s racing schedule isn’t much of a schedule for the time being. For instance, he skipped weekly programs last Saturday at Port Royal and this past Friday at Lernerville — and he isn’t sure if he’ll race next weekend at all — so he can tend to his hurting father. He also skipped his annual winter Speedweeks trip.
“Right now it’s up in the air where we go with how he’s feeling,” Flinner said. “If he can go, we’ll go. If we can’t, he’s obviously my top priority right now. He’s functional. He’s just wore out and tired right now.”
Symptoms of Mark’s cancer didn’t creep up on the Flinner family overnight. Last summer, Flinner started noticing that his father wasn’t at full strength with day-to-day activities. When Mark visited doctors, they thought the lack of energy had something to do with his triple heart-bypass surgery three years ago.
“The doctors thought that’s what they needed to look for, that something was wrong with that,” Flinner said. “He was losing feeling in his legs and he had blood clots. Then finally before Christmas found out it was the tumor causing the blood clots in his legs. The tumor was so big was cutting the circulation off in his legs.”
Whether working together at their family mechanic shop, Complete Auto Service and Performance, or getting to and from the racetrack, Flinner spends most of his weeks with his father. Flinner’s father has never missed one of his son’s races either and Flinner refuses to race without his father present at the racetrack.
“He’s my best friend and my whole world right now,” Flinner said. “He’s my main priority and I hope he gets better. Hopefully he gets better. He’s my best friend. That’s all I can say. I love the man to death. I’d do anything to keep him alive. If I had that opportunity to do it, I would.”
Flinner, who won the Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series Rookie of the Year in 2016, wants to at least take one more road trip with his father this summer. He's yet to compete in the Prairie Dirt Classic at Fairbury (Ill.) Speedway and USA Nationals at Cedar Lake Speedway in New Richmond, Wis.
He’s praying from the deepest dwellings of his heart that he’ll be able to make those trips with his father July 28-29 at Fairbury and Aug. 3-5 at Cedar Lake.
“I really want to go to Fairbury, but it all depends on how he feels,” Flinner said. “Hopefully he’s still here come then. The doctors, they’re not really positive on how long he’s going to be here. I’m hoping he’s still here so we can go to Fairbury. When I did that Lucas deal, we did a lot of the crown jewels. I think Fairbury and Cedar Lake are the only two (crown jewels) I haven’t done.
“That’s something I want to do with my dad, those two races to knock off the bucket list so I can say I did all the crown jewels with him.”
