Following NHRA’s Four-Wide Nationals in Charlotte, N.C., April 29, Pro Mod driver Richie Stevens Jr., who is competing full time in NHRA’s Pro Mod Series in 2018 for Al-Anabi Racing and Sheikh Khalid Bin Hamad Al-Thani, stuck around to make some practice runs April 30.

Stevens, who failed to qualify for the Four-Wide Nationals, on his first two test laps made solid progress – the third one however, was a different story as he crashed the 2015 Camaro he was driving at zMax Dragway.

“We got he car out on Sunday because we have not run as well as we should have the first three races,” Stevens said. “Shannon Jenkins (Stevens’ crew chief) went over it with a fine tune comb and found some things here and there. The first run on Monday it picked up almost nine hundredths from what we ran on Friday and Saturday. I was excited about it. We came out and made a second run and it slowed down a little bit, but it was still way better than we had been running.”

Then the third run happened.

“We made some changes and came up and made another run and it was around 12 or 1 p.m., and the track was a little hot,” Stevens said. “I got out there about 200 feet and it started shaking, but it was going straight, and I probably would have lifted any other time, but I guess I was just excited about how we ran the first two runs and I just wanted to get Shannon some more data, so we could keep moving in the right direction.  It was shaking, but wasn’t violent, and I don’t know if it shifted gears, those automatics shift on their own from RPMs, and I just shifted, and it turned right so quick there was nothing I could do to catch it. I was in the left lane and it just took a right-hand turn and got up on two wheels and came across the center line and got the right-side wall, pretty much the whole right-side of the car. I got it stopped out there and I didn’t hit anything else and luckily there was nobody in the other lane. I was a little sore from being bounced around.”

The wreck left Stevens frustrated.

“I hate it because Shannon and the guys have really worked hard trying to get this car right and we finally made some progress and here I go and tear it up,” he said. “The car is definitely repairable, but it will not be done in time for Topeka (Kan.) (May 18-20), so we are going to bring out the old Speedtech car, the one that’s been around a long time. I drove it last year at a PDRA race at Galot (Motorsports Park in Benson, N.C.) and I did a lot of testing overseas with it in Qatar, so we will transfer everything from the black car to that one and go run it somewhere before we head to Topeka. KH (Sheikh Khalid Bin Hamad Al-Thani) told me shrug it off, forget about it and move on and go to Topeka and see what we can do there.”

This was Stevens’ second wreck while racing – his first came during a 2003 test session in Indianapolis in a Pro Stock car.

“I was bumped and bruised in that one,” Stevens said. “I went through the lights and it got loose on me and the parachute failed, and I ended up hitting the wall down there and that wreck was a little bit more severe than this one. Luckily and thankfully, I walked away from both wrecks without any big injuries and I lived to race another day.”