Kevin Rivenbark had no clue his Thursday was about to go upside down -- until it did.

In the blink of an eye, Rivenbark’s best test pass of the day at GALOT Motorsports Park on Sept. 30 went all kinds of wrong. The parachute on his 200-plus-mph Pro Boost Camaro didn’t deploy properly and sparked a crash. The incident did significant damage to the car whose driver was comfortably atop the standings entering last weekend’s PDRA Drag Wars at the Benson, N.C., track.

“It went through the (timing) traps at 3.637 (seconds), the fastest of the day except for Johnny Camp,” said Rivenbark, a 2016 and ‘19 PDRA champion. “It can be good one minute and then bad very quickly.”

Soon after his return to the team’s hauler, another competitor, Stan Shelton, offered Rivenbark the use of his car for the weekend and beyond. Rivenbark entered the event with a 322-point edge over fellow North Carolinian Todd Tutterow, but when the weekend ended, a first-round loss by Rivenbark and a runner-up finish for Tutterow had slashed that margin to a mere 19 points.

With only the Oct. 14-17 World Finals at Virginia Motorsports Park remaining on the schedule, their duel will most likely be settled by which driver does better in qualifying and goes farther in eliminations.

Rivenbark was paired alongside his GALOT Motorsports teammate, Daniel Pharris of Sikeston, Mo., on that fateful run. Everything was fine until Rivenbark pulled the lever to launch the parachute, and in a fraction of a second he realized something was wrong … very wrong.

“Everything was good. Went through shutdown, hit the parachutes, cut the motor off,” Rivenbark said. “But I could tell the parachutes didn’t grab. I didn’t feel that tug on the back.

“The next thing I know, carbon fiber was coming all in the car, and it was wheel-hopping, then it turned left. I thought I got it back, but it had turned again and laid over. It had peeled off some speed, but it was still going pretty fast. I thought Daniel was going to T-bone me if he didn’t get his car stopped, but he did. Busted his front tires sliding, trying to stop. We were both very fortunate.”

So, what goes through a driver’s mind when he’s sliding, wheels up, the length of a track’s shutdown area?

“‘Is it ever gonna stop?’ ” Rivenbark said. “The run happens in 3.6 seconds. (The slide) seemed like it lasted five minutes.”

Pharris slammed on the brakes, then coasted down the track and stopped close to where Rivenbark’s car had come to rest on its roof. He quickly unbuckled his safety gear, removed the steering wheel, uncoiled his lanky frame from the car and ran to Rivenbark’s aid, as did a track safety worker.

“There was a little fire; not much, because the motor was off,” Rivenbark said. “One of the track guys sprayed the fire out. I finally got my seat belt undone -- I’m upside down in the car, right? -- and was trying to get out, but the parachute handle was grabbing my helmet, so I had to take it off to get out. Somebody grabbed my feet and said, ‘Hold on, I got ya!’ About five of them asked me, ‘What’s your name? Where are you at?’ I told them, ‘I know where I am, I ain’t hurt, I promise you.”

Rivenbark said it wasn’t the first time the team has battled parachute issues. John Strickland, who won the Pro Boost title last season, had a serious problem in a race at Bradenton, Fla., when the team used springs, rather than blasts of air, to deploy the chutes. 

“The spring got hold of the tire and was probably about an inch from going through his seat,” Rivenbark said, “so we put a piece of titanium back there, then switched to air launchers. We’ve gone two years with no problem, but this time it was just weird airflow (under the car) or something.

In the wake of Thursday’s crash, the team mounted a camera inside Pharris’ Camaro to get a view of chute deployment. Midway through the run, Strickland said, there was a noticeable “vacuum up under the car,” adding that the situation “has got to be addressed.”

Thursday’s incident marked the third time, Rivenbark said, there had been a parachute issue with his car. This time, he said he heard a noise he thought indicated that the rear-end gearing had locked up, only to later learn that some of the parachute cords had likely wrapped around the housing and axle tubes.

“You would’ve thought the rear end would’ve snapped the parachute cords, but that shows you how strong they are,” he said. “It was just out of control. I tried to get it back, and it wouldn’t come back.”

The car suffered a large amount of damage to the body that the driver said was mostly “cosmetic” but “ain’t cheap.” The greater problem, he said, is that the long slide on the roof damaged the top of the roll cage.

Watching all destruction take place was Stan Shelton, a second-year Pro Boost racer who was waiting his turn to run down the same lane as Rivenbark. After the clean-up and following his own blast down the eighth-mile, Shelton sought out Rivenbark, who has been a Pro Mod mentor to him.

“He said, ‘You’re driving my car. You’re running for the championship, I’m not,’ ” Rivenbark said. 

He responded, “Are you sure?” Shelton was adamant in saying yes.

“I was a little over three rounds ahead of Todd in the points. It would’ve been devastating if I couldn’t have raced,” Rivenbark said.

 

 

 

 

 

He was no stranger to Shelton’s 2019 Ford Mustang. He had recommended that Shelton have his race car built by Jerry Bickel of Moscow Mills, Mo., and has, since Shelton took delivery, been the owner/driver’s most reliable, trusted confidante.

“We know John (Strickland) and Kevin and all of them from tractor pulling,” said Shelton, who, like Strickland, competed in NTPA pulling action before switching to the dragstrip. “Kevin’s been there for every step. 

“We understand everything about these things from the firewall forward. I can build that motor, tear it down front to back, but we understand nothing behind the firewall. But I can ask Kevin anything that would seem real stupid to somebody else, real elementary because we didn’t have any drag racing background. … Kevin’s been involved all the way down to what kind of shoes I wear. 

“He’s our kind of guy. He’s gone with us testing. He’s come just for moral support sometimes, and talks to me about what I’m feeling.”

They’ve been able to converse on an even higher level since Rivenbark drove the car about a month during a test at Darlington, S.C. Shelton couldn’t attend the second day of the session, and he asked Rivenbark to fill in and provide the team with feedback.

“He’s been a great friend,” Shelton said. “There was no question in my mind -- when I saw that happen, God, we were praying he was OK -- that we definitely wanted him to move over to our car and continue that championship push.”

Rivenbark wound up seventh in qualifying, yet only five-hundredths of a second behind the 3.618-second pace set by Camp.

On Saturday, in the opening round of eliminations, Rivenbark blistered Chris Cline at the launch with a reaction time of .027 seconds to Cline’s .104. But by the time Rivenbark hit half track, the car developed tire shake. He backed out rather than putting Shelton’s car at risk, and Cline took the win light.

“I should have done a better job of pedaling,” Rivenbark said, “but being so used to the ProCharger on my car … the screw blower on his is so different in that situation. When you get back in the throttle with it, the front end wants to come up.”

That left the door open for Tutterow to speed through, and he inflicted almost the maximum damage. He fell short of swiping the lead from Rivenbark only because Pharris’ Camaro performed better in the final round.

Tutterow left first with a stellar .009 reaction time, but Pharris launched at .018. That equally strong ‘leave’ enabled Pharris’ 3.641, 206.95, to squeak out a win against Tutterow’s 3.652, 208.04 -- a margin of victory of 2/1,000ths of a second.

For those unfamiliar with Shelton, he’s a businessman from rural New London, N.C., a one-stoplight town about 50 miles northeast of Charlotte. 

“That’s all you need,” Shelton said. “But it’s a big enough place we’ve got running water at the house.”

Shelton said his Mustang’s numbers have improved since its debut last year, but that its tune-up had, until recently, made for “a small window” in performance reliability. A test at Virginia Motorsports Park, combined with some transmission and rear-end changes, has boosted his confidence to the point he believes “we’ve got the car where we have some flexibility. Because of that, we feel comfortable we can get better. It’s making improvements every pass.

“We feel like we’re moving forward. Kevin’s going to drive the car again at Virginia. We want him to finish out this championship swing, and hopefully we can help get him there.”