The next time you see Jason Scruggs at an ADRL event he’ll have a new car.

Yesterday at Houston Raceway Park, the former two-time Pro Extreme world champ crashed his ’68 Camaro in third-round qualifying for today’s inaugural ADRL Texas Drags. Scruggs was uninjured in the accident, but the car now needs some front chassis and suspension work, a new right, front wheel and a new carbon-fiber body.

“Other than that, it’s really not that bad,” he says of the car that for a full year held sway as the ADRL’s quickest and fastest entry and was a race winner as recently as three months ago in Georgia. The damage is severe enough, however, that Scruggs plans to debut a brand-new, Garret Race Cars-built ’63 Corvette, draped in that familiar Scruggs red, at the ADRL’s next outing in just two weeks (Aug. 6-7), at Gateway International Raceway, near St. Louis.

The next time you see Jason Scruggs at an ADRL event he’ll have a new car.

Yesterday at Houston Raceway Park, the former two-time Pro Extreme world champ crashed his ’68 Camaro in third-round qualifying for today’s inaugural ADRL Texas Drags. Scruggs was uninjured in the accident, but the car now needs some front chassis and suspension work, a new right, front wheel and a new carbon-fiber body.

“Other than that, it’s really not that bad,” he says of the car that for a full year held sway as the ADRL’s quickest and fastest entry and was a race winner as recently as three months ago in Georgia. The damage is severe enough, however, that Scruggs plans to debut a brand-new, Garret Race Cars-built ’63 Corvette, draped in that familiar Scruggs red, at the ADRL’s next outing in just two weeks (Aug. 6-7), at Gateway International Raceway, near St. Louis.

“I’ll have to race it because there’s no way this one’s going to be fixed in time,” he says.

Each time Scruggs tackled the HRP track from the right lane yesterday and each time he fought to avoid crossing the center line.

“Yesterday just wasn’t my day,” Scruggs lamented. “We wrecked three times and just didn’t hit anything until it finally caught up to us.”

Scruggs says the car, also built by Garret, wasn’t shaking when it left the line, but on each pass it would veer left, forcing him to rapidly lift and upset its suspension. He claims early incremental numbers from the second and third passes indicated potential number-one elapsed times.

“It’s obviously a good car, but we think we may have some kind of issue under there that we just haven’t found yet. I’m taking the car home with me now and we’ll look at it there, but we’ll be concentrating on getting the new one ready for St. Louis,” he says.

Scruggs also says he accepts full responsibility for what happened in Houston.

“I’ll be the first to admit I probably drove it too far, but we weren’t qualified yet and it wasn’t shaking so I thought I could keep driving it. I thought I had it saved after I got the chutes out, but these cars are so fast now that if they get out of the groove they can come around on you so easy,” he explains. “I was just trying to get it in the show. I guess I was just trying too hard.”