Good for Steve Park
I'm too cheap to spring for the SPEED channel, so I missed last night's truck race. But I was overjoyed to pick up today's paper and see that Steve Park had won the American Racing Wheels 200 at the California Speedway
Park, as y'all might remember, was the victim of maybe the strangest thing I've ever seen at a race. (I was watching the race on TV.) It was Sept. 1, 2001, early in the Busch race at Darlington, and Park was rolling along just fine during a caution lap. The next thing you know Park's car veers left toward the wall. Then a lap-down Larry Foyt, who had sped up to take his spot at the front for the restart, T-boned Park right in the driver's side door.
It was a brutal crash, and for a few moments I thought Park was dead -- that was how hard the hit was. He survived, but this freak accident wrecked Park's health and his racing career.
He suffered a concussion. The injury wasn't as bad as the one Jerry Nadeau got when he wrecked in practice at Richmond in 2003. But it was bad enough to make a promising driver (he won at Watkins Glen in 2000 and at Rockingham a year later) into an ineffective and, arguably, dangerous one.
He missed four races at the start of the 2002 season and finished 33rd in points for the year.
In 2003, he won the pole for April's race at California. He declared himself back. Turned out that was premature: He wrecked on the first lap (that was almost as freaky as his Darlington wreck) and ended the race 40th. Two weeks later, DEI fired him after six years as the driver of the No. 1 Pennzoil Chevy. He immediately signed with RCR (which had just fired Jeff Green as driver of the No. 30 car). But by season's end, RCR decided not to keep Park around.
Last season, Park ran a full truck schedule and had a respectable season - 9th in points, with five top 5s and 10 top 10s. (His best finish: 3rd at Las Vegas.) He also won the series' most popular driver award.
The happy little side note to all of this: Park became the 10th driver to win a race in all three major NASCAR series. Good for him.
Comments (2)
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Is this Park's first victory since the accident? It's great to see him in victory lane.
Posted on February 28, 2005 1:21 AM
Yep, that was Park's first win in any NASCAR race since his crash in 2001.
A lot of sports writers (and maybe Park himself) declared after the win that Park has completed his comeback. That's a little premature.
That's not to say Park hasn't recovered from his head injury. From where I'm sitting, it looks like he has. (And I can't find anything that says he's still showing any lingering effects.)
That said, I can't believe Park is completely satisfied with running the Truck Series. It's not Busch, and it's certainly not Cup. The comeback story I'd love to see is Park signing a deal with a Cup team.
Posted on February 28, 2005 11:23 AM