Friday's Race Recap by LegendsNATION

WILD HEAT RACE CRASH SENDS ANDERSON TO THE HOSPITAL

Jordan Anderson, who is running for the National Championship in the Pro Division and is second in Pro Division points at Lowe’s Motor Speedway’s Summer Shootout Series, took a vicious lick in the wall at Caraway during a heat race.  The impact destroyed Anderson’s #19 and sent him to the hospital.

LegendsNation.com spoke to Anderson on Monday and the young driver admitted that while he was still sore, he was felling much better and was looking forward to coming back to Lowe’s for round six of the Shootout Tuesday night.

“I fell a little bit better right now,” said Anderson from his home in South Carolina.  “When I hit the wall they said it knocked me out. They said I was out for three to four minutes. I didn’t think it was that long but that is what the track officials said. Obviously I needed to go to the hospital and get checked out. I got all the x-rays that needed to be done and got a cat-scan and my head checked out good. They said I had some bruising on my lower spine and a concussion. I bruised my knee up pretty bad. I was really lucky to come out of that one clean. I had so many people and drivers at the track praying for me and that made it nice. We are going to go to the doctor today and make sure it’s ok to go up to Charlotte and race.

Jordan hit the wall hard, but remembered exactly how the accident transpired.

“I started in the back of my heat race and I was trying to make it up through the field. There were three drivers in front of me and they got sideways. I closed on them pretty quick. An oil line or something came off of Kyle Beattie’s car and he spun out at the bottom of the track. I was going to go high to miss it and didn’t know there was oil down at the time because it was like little smoke-bomb and it went away. It wasn’t like a big poof of smoke. When I hit it, I went straight up the track and got on the brakes to slow it down and that didn’t work. I got back in the throttle to spin it around and that didn’t work and by the time I tried both those things, the wall had come up and I hit it a ton. That’s probably the hardest hit I have ever had.”

Some involved in the incident were not happy with how the wreck happened.

“We ran down the back straight-away and Paddy (Rodenbeck) and Brandon (Thomson) had been roughing each other up going for the lead,” said a disgusted Kyle Beattie.  “I was just hanging out in third because I knew all I had to do was finish third to make the re-draw. They just got done knocking each other around a bit and I got right up on Paddy’s bumper. Paddy just tried to get down behind him and hit the brakes a little excessive. He locked the front tires up and I had nowhere to go. I don’t know why he stopped so fast. I was still wide open. It knocked the oil filter off of it. Anderson hit the oil and had nowhere to go and knocked the wall down.”

“Brandon got by me on the inside and I checked up to let him by and get behind him,” explained Rodenbeck.  “I might have checked up too soon and Kyle got in the back of me. It just all went from there. I care a lot about Jordan. He’s a good teammate and I hate to see something like this happen to him and I hope he’s alright.”

“When someone hits the brakes like that when you are wide open there is not time to hit the brakes,” explained Beattie, who let his frustration be known during a post-race PA interview.  “I was still wide open when I hit him (Rodenbeck). I know it hurt my neck a little bit. Anderson really took a hard hit.

“It really shouldn’t happen. They put everybody out here together and some of these people get a little too worked up over nothing. He’s running second and it didn’t matter if he won or not. It put a kid in the hospital and it’s un-called for. I was really mad at Paddy and went down and shook my fist at him. As soon as I saw Anderson was hurt it was like a light switch went off and it didn’t really matter how mad I was. It turned to how Jordan was at that point.”

With the accident behind him, Anderson is looking ahead to getting back behind the wheel. At the same time he knows that he was lucky to escape serious injury.

"I just have to give credit to 600 Racing and Humpy Wheeler for building a safe car, as fast as we were going Friday night and to hit the wall as hard as I did, Im just really thankful I was in a safe car"