By T.J. Buffenbarger
KNOXVILLE, Iowa (August 10, 2023) — Among the things taking place during the 2023 edition of the Knoxville Nationals is a film screening of “World’s Fastest Sprint Car: Damion Gardner and the Championship Mind “written and directed by Sean Buckley of Jackslash Films 1:00 PM Friday at the National Sprint Car Hall of Fame and Museum.
This is not the first time Buckley’s films have appeared in the Sprint Car Capital of the World having three Reel Wheel Sprint Car Flim Festival movie awards and multiple National Sprint Car Hall of Fame media member of the year awards to his credit for projects such as Follow the Corn I and II, Dirty 30 broadcasts that featured a variety of sprint car racing, and Indiana Sprint Car Series.
For this project Buckley teamed up with fellow Californians Mike Grosswendt from SurfNSprint, Steve Watt, along with Mike and Tim Truex from LoudPedalTV to tell the story of the sprint car career of multiple time USAC / CRA Sprint Car champion Damion Gardner.
The footage for the film started out as a project in 2013 documenting Gardner at the Bonneville Salt Flats to break the 200 mile per hour barrier with a sprint car, which the team did in 2014. During that time there was a significant amount of footage shot of that endeavor with the idea to make a movie, but never came to fruition.
“Damion had come over to my house one day, and asked if I would be interested in taking my movie on,” said Buckley. “When it was pitched it to me, I said I was interested, but I wanted to make sure Damion’s career stuff in there as well along with the Bonneville footage. That’s when the ball started rolling.”
The result tells the unique story about Gardner’s entire career where he discovered sprint car racing with little to no exposure to the sport to becoming a multiple time champion with the Belleville footage worked in. As the project wore on it turned out that production was taking place, it became apparent that Gardner was starting to wind down his career, which further inspired Buckley to tell the story.
“We were doing the interview segments and it came out that Damion was coming to the end of his career. Now it just seemed to cover his career and start to what would be the end of the line.”
The end product tells the complex story of Gardner’s career and personality along that will not only entertain, but make the audience think about the content.
The original idea was to screen the film during the Hall of Fame’s induction weekend, but as things progressed the team decided to make a bigger splash by having the premier at the biggest sprint car race on the planet Friday of the Knoxville Nationals. Due to demand, the screening will be invitation only.
After Knoxville more screenings are planned in Northern California, Southern California, Indianapolis during the PRI Trade Show in December, and possibly other racing venues and action sports festivals around the country.