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.