Jeff Burghardt is the photographer whose FOX Sports debut came last Sunday at Sonoma as he happened to be on the other side of the guard wall from Alexis DeJoria and her Tequila Patron Toyota when she crashed.   

“I did my Hollywood stuntman role after attempting to dodge Alexis’ car. I didn’t do a very good job. It didn’t hit me, but she took a chunk out of the wall,” he said.

“I didn’t think it was that close when it happened. I really didn’t. I saw Mark Rebilas’ photo. Then I realized how lose it really was. It looks like it was about eight inches [from hitting him]. I’m very grateful for Alexis not pulling the parachutes and the automatic thing not shooting them out at me. That would have been a little more entertaining,” he said.

“I didn’t scrape anything – no sympathy scars, no bumps, no bruises. I tucked the camera in like a football,” Burghardt said.

He said he wanted to clear up one point: “Everybody thinks I ran. I didn’t run. I was trying to turn to go down and away from the car and then trying to see where Alexis was. The top half of my body was ready to move, but the bottom was not going anywhere. I was trying to get up. I thought I had a good reaction time, but I looked at the photo and I hadn’t even moved yet. I have a horrible reaction time.”

Burghardt said, “Alexis did everything she could possibly do. If she didn’t turn that car back the other way, I’m probably not talking to you. She did a heck of a job. There’s no other way to put it.”

Burghardt had his camera trained on John Force’s car in the opposite lane when DeJoria’s car made a violent move to the left and hit the wall directly in front of the young photographer from Oakdale, Calif.

“I was shooting Force’s car. The only thing I saw of Alexis’ car, out of the corner of my eye, was ‘Red Line Oil’ on the rear wing of her car. I thought, ‘That’s not supposed to be here.’ It was so quick. It was absolutely the loudest sound in my life. It was louder than all the fuel cars going by. I don’t know what she heard, but on the outside of the car, that was loud,” he said.

If he could send DeJoria a message, he said, he would tell her, “Get well and come back. We miss you and need you.”  And with a wink, he said, “And please bring more tequila next time.”