By T.J. Buffenbarger
(September 1, 2024) — There are times where bad situations just end up working out well in the end. Dan McCarron has experienced that over the past two weeks with the lows of a grinding crash that took it’s toll on his race car and body to ending up in victory lane at the same racetrack two weeks later.
Now a veteran racer at 38 years old, McCarron’s experience two Saturdays ago at Butler Motor Speedway was the kind that would make someone consider selling the race car and getting a boat to hang out on the Great Lakes.
During his heat race after the initial start where McCarron had taken the lead was called back, the second start sent him to the work area after contact with another car.
“We took the green in the heat race and jumped out to the lead, and yellow lights came on because someone accidentally turned the yellow lights on,” said McCarron. “That that changed the night. Instead of leading a heat race, we had to restart again, and I got ran over before we even got out of turn four by somebody and took the nose wing off the car.”
McCarron’s team was able to make repairs and salvage a third-place finish in the heat race, but the night didn’t improve in the main event as he tumbled down the front stretch at Butler following contact with another car. The hard crash left both Dan and his racecar broken.
“We were taken out and ran over, went for a bad tumble, and broke some ribs,” McCarron said of his high flying, ground pounding tumble at Butler. “I was pretty banged up, but I didn’t realize it that night or the next day. The following day is when I noticed when I woke up and noticed I couldn’t breathe. It destroyed the car. Literally every part, blew the motor planes out of it. It was a bad deal.”
Along with the broken ribs McCarron also had to travel from his home in Britton, Michigan to Texas for work three days last week, putting an extra squeeze on the family’s time to get the race car back together with McCarron’s wife Kate being a key piece to getting everything back on track in just two weeks.
“It takes a lot more than people realize to get everything done and ready,” said McCarron of his small family-owned team. “It’s just me my wife in the shop during the week. With our two kids, she’s not out here as much as she used to be. Years ago, we would have torn down the car in the same night last time, but she does a ton, and I couldn’t do it without her and Bryan Darling at the racetrack. He’s there every night we’re at the races helping.”
That hard work paid off on one of the most emotional nights of McCarron’s racing career. Saturday’s event at Butler fell on the same weekend one year ago when McCarron’s father Jim, a racer himself that instilled the love of the sport his son still carries today, passed away which gave McCarron some extra motivation to be on track on Saturday.
Not seeing victory lane since Fremont Speedway on July 30, 2021, McCarron put the full night together qualifying sixth fastest, winning his heat race, and then leading all 25-laps of the main event. It didn’t come easy though as McCarron had to contend with three restarts in the closing stages of the feature event, giving Thomas Schinderle multiple chances to challenge for the win.
“The first one was just in passing, the second one was with two to go,” said McCarron. “Then finally, when we took the white Schinderle was right on me coming to the checkered. I got pretty wide, and it would have been tough to go by, but (Schinderle) did try and I was not lifting.”
McCarron not only won in memory of his father, but it was the first time trip for his youngest daughter Mallory to victory lane and fulfilled his oldest daughter Sydney’s wishes of a return to climbing up on the wing following a win by her father.
“Technically, they were both in victory lane and Fremont, but the one wasn’t born yet,” McCarron said of his daughters getting their first chance to celebrate a victory together with him. “I want to win, bad. But if I’d have won some races elsewhere and they weren’t there, I would have been upset. It was awesome they could be there even better that my mom could be there last night as well.”
For McCarron the victory was the culmination of hard work through doubts that all racers have during tough stretches of their driving careers.
“You reach points when you wonder if this is still worth it?” said McCarron of the time put into his family race team. “Knowing that this was a one-year anniversary of him passing was a lot of motivation to get back out. I think about him a lot, and I thought about him a lot during the race.”
After all the well wishers had left and the McCarron family had packed up the race car for the ride home, the family celebrated victory with a quiet ride home thinking of the next couple of races ahead at Fremont Speedway in Fremont, Ohio.
“I was actually kind of just silent, which is crazy,” said McCarron of the trip home. “My kids were sleeping in the truck, so didn’t want to, you know, I can’t, don’t want to wake them up. Just a lot of kind of self-reflection for my wife and I just talking to each other. It’s the first win since my dad and we talked about that. It was a little somber, but it makes it worth it.”
Other notes….
• British Columbia resident Aaron Willison completed a sweep of the Must See Racing events this season at Owosso Speedway. With Willison and car owner/mad scientist Dick Myers having eyes on some of the bigger paying winged pavement sprint car races this fall, both should be strong contenders for victory in all those events.
• Max Stambaugh and car owner Steve Smith officially secured the 2024 Great Lakes Super Sprints Michigan region championship for 2024. Stambaugh still holds a commanding 151-point lead in the touring championship for GLSS but faces a 24 point deficit to Dustin Daggett in the Ohio region championship.
• Daggett scored his first feature victory Saturday night at Crystal Motor Speedway since May 31st at I-96 Speedway.
• During an unusual incident during the parade lap Saturday at Crystal Motor Speedway, Cody Howard’s car raced at full speed through the infield, launched off an embankment for one of the light poles, and crashed into Brad Lamberson’s car. Everyone was uninjured in the scary incident.
• Steve Irwin notched another Great Lakes Traditional Sprints point title in front of his home crowd at Silver Bullet Speedway in Owendale, Michigan. Between his titles with Sprints on Dirt, Spartan Speedway and various non-wing groups in the area the most recent GLTS championship is the 11th of Irwin’s career.