Florence Speedway
McCowan salvages night after disappearing act
By Kevin Kovac
DirtonDirt senior writer.webp?v=2.0.5)
Dillon McCowan's car disappears over the wall. (Ryan Roberts)
UNION, Ky. (Aug. 6) — When Dillon McCowan’s car stopped tumbling, he needed a moment to grasp the unique predicament in which he found himself.
“I didn’t know where I ended up,” McCowan said. “Then I looked around and I’m like, ‘Well, there’s trees out here.’ ”
The 22-year-old Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series rookie from Urbana, Mo., wasn’t quite in the middle of a forest, but he was close. He flipped completely out of the ballpark on the opening lap of his Thursday heat race during the twin 25-lap preliminary programs of the Sunoco North-South 100 at Florence Speedway, leaving his No. 8 machine pressed up against the trunk of a tree amid the thickly wooded stretch lining the outside of turns three and four. | Video | Slideshow
“I hit one of the big old trees out there and that’s what stopped (the car),” McCowan said.
McCowan — the young, outgoing redhead who burst into the national conversation last month by sweeping a doubleheader at his home track of Lucas Oil Speedway in Wheatland, Mo., for his first-ever national touring victories — emerged uninjured from his battered vehicle and immediately conducted a spirited trackside interview with FloRacing pit reporter Ben Shelton, but there’s no denying he had experienced a downright frightening accident. Everyone at Florence and watching the live broadcast gasped at the spectacular nature of the crash that sent McCowan off the half-mile oval’s playing surface and into … well, no one was exactly sure because he disappeared from view.
A veteran tow-truck driver who’s worked races at Florence for four decades said later that he couldn’t recall a race car ever going over the wall in that location. It’s certainly a tricky and dangerous spot for a car to enter, considering the track’s concrete outside barrier is ringed by large billboards and, beyond that, an embankment that slopes down slightly to a thick conglomeration of trees and other foliage that serves as a roughly 40-foot buffer zone to a stone roadway at the edge of a parking lot.
Among the first people to reach the top of the wall and catch a glimpse of McCowan’s car at rest after a red flag was displayed was his father and team owner Charlie, who admitted he “almost puked” when he peered down the short hill to see Dillon’s car on its right-side wheels with its roof snug against the tree. He feared the worst, which was evident from the shaken demeanor he still showed when, even after talking to his son outside the car and being assured he wasn’t hurt, he walked from the accident scene into the infield and reported the situation to VG Performance’s Vinny Guliani.
The younger McCowan understood the concern the crash inspired in his father. He knew he was fortunate to escape unscathed. But he also maintained a sense of humor through the ordeal when talking with former Lucas Oil Series champion and current part-time official Earl Pearson Jr.
“You know, it’s one of them things,” McCowan said. “Everybody’s got to have a first flip, and that was my first one. I got out and Earl said something about it, and I was like, ‘Well, dad would have chewed my ass if I’d done ‘er half-ass, so we done ‘er to the max I guess.’”
McCowan’s trip into the thicket resulted from his Longhorn Chassis bicycling as he charged into turn three.
“I got in there behind Brian (Shirley) and, you know, I’m trying to make the show, so I was wide-open in there and I just tractioned up real hard and I was pretty much flipping before I knew I was in a bad spot,” McCowan said. “I got, you know, sideways getting into that cushion, and then I biked up. I think there’s maybe a little rut going in, but I don’t blame it on the track. It wasn’t like it was rough, you know?
“But it biked up a little bit, and when it biked it got up in the fluff. And then it was so, like, tractioned up, and when the right-rear wheel caught, that was it. Normally you can, like, drive out of that, and I’ve done that several times, you know, biked up real hard like that on two wheels and just drove out of it, stayed in the gas … but just once the right-rear wheel dug in, it started flipping.”
McCowan’s car gyrated high in the air on the track and headed for the outside wall. Its right-front corner hit the top of the barrier and then the car smashed roof-first through a First National Bank billboard and rolled toward the trees. He was alert the entire time but unsure “where the hell I was going and where I was going to end up.”
“I didn’t even know I was in the billboards,” McCowan said. “I was kind of hoping I stayed in the ballpark, but when I got to looking around I knew I didn’t.”
With the car propped up against the tree on its right side and its sheetmetal mangled — most notably, the rear deck was shoved forward and the roof was bent over the front and left-side roll bars — McCowan couldn’t immediately climb out unassisted. The track’s safety crew and Lucas Oil Series officials sprung into action to help him.
Lucas Oil Series director Rick Schwallie was one of the first people on the scene.
“I got up there and they kept calling more help to the scene, and once they got there, the biggest issue was, I don’t know where the fuel was coming from, but there was fuel spilling out of the cell,” Schwallie said. “And the way it was on its side, like, he couldn’t get out, so we were just making sure that we got to (fuel) and had fire equipment ready in case something happened there.
“The good part of it was it was down an embankment, so his fuel was running down the hill (away from the car). That was to our aid. But I was worried about, you know, how dry that (foliage) is” in case of ignition.
As Schwallie himself with “making sure (McCowan’s) dad was in the know of what was going on and that the situation was at least under control,” a tow truck was backed up to the outside wall and its cable was attached to the car so it could be gingerly pulled down off the tree. That maneuver allowed McCowan to “crawl out through the side” and appear on the wall with his arms outstretched, acknowledging the loud cheers of the crowd.
McCowan even seized the moment of goodwill to ask the fans to help with his team’s recovery from the wreck.
“I’m selling T-shirts over there,” he said in his interview with Shelton. “I’m really gonna need y’all to go buy some of them ‘cause I have a lot of stuff to pay for now.”
That was an understatement — the car, according to Charlie McCowan, was “totaled.” He made the declaration a couple hours after the accident, following the program’s final checkered flag when the machine was finally brought back to the pit area. After two trucks combined to pull the car back onto the racetrack — one winched it up the embankment while the other yanked the front end over the wall — it remained sitting in the infield inside turn three for the remainder of the show.
There was, of course, no time for McCowan and his crew to worry about the crashed car until after the night of racing was over. They had to continue racing for event points, so, after Charlie had the track’s emergency responders check his son for a concussion in the ambulance, Dillon climbed in the team’s backup car and was back on the track for his group’s B-main. He made a stellar last-lap move to go from sixth to fourth — earning more cheers from the crowd for grabbing the final transfer spot — and then picked up the hard-charger award for a 24th-to-12th run in the second 25-lap semifeature that somewhat salvaged his evening.
McCowan’s crew was joined by his buddy Devin Moran’s team and other crew members in stripping down the wrecked car after the twin features. That’s when a bend in the car’s front halo bar was discovered, prompting Charlie McCowan’s declaration.
Dillon was saddened to lose a car that was barely a month old and had carried him to his pair of Lucas Oil Series triumphs.
“I hate it because that was a good piece. I hate that, and I apologize to dad because he’s the one who funds this whole deal,” said McCowan, who added that he was thankful “all the safety equipment done its job and Longhorn builds one hell of a stout race car.”
Charlie noted that he wasn’t worried about the car. His only concern was his son’s health because, as he remarked, “The car can be replaced.”
Fortunately, Dillon was no worse for wear after one of the year’s wildest Dirt Late Model crashes.
“That was a scary deal,” Schwallie said. “I’m glad he was OK.”
