Adam Beeler
2014 was shaping up to be quite a season for dirt racer Adam Beeler. Throughout the first half of the campaign he had scored three wins, finished in the top-3 a total of 11 times and posted four overall fast times in qualifying as he, Ryan King and Rusty Ballenger battled on a weekly basis in the NeSmith Late Model division at 411 Motor Speedway. Unfortunately, disaster struck during the summer and that great season was derailed.
“I jumped off a four foot high porch onto gravel and landed wrong,” Beeler explained. “It broke my tibia and fibula. I had to have six screws and a plate on one side and two screws on the other. It’s been a long process.”
The accident caused the Knoxville driver to endure two months of rehabilitation and recovery. And of course, it also cost him two months of racing.
On Saturday night, Beeler returned to action in the “Topless for the Ta-Ta’s” Late Model event at 411. In his first trip back since the injury, he drove to an 8th place finish in what proved to be a solid return effort.
“It wasn’t bad,” Beeler said of his night. “We’d been out about two months so our main focus was to come here and see how things went and to get good laps to make sure everything was good. We just wanted to take everything home in one piece.”
Beeler can’t help but think of what might have been. A season that seemed to be bound for the record books was cut short in a disappointing way.
“It was frustrating,” Beeler admitted. “We were leading the points up here at 411 and we were second in the NeSmith national points for weekly racing when I broke my foot. It was really hard to swallow all that knowing we had such a good chance of winning both of those championships this year.”
As for the rest of the year, Beeler just plans to get himself and his car back into ‘racing shape’ in preparation for a big year in 2015.
“We’re just going to race here and there towards the end of this year, just practicing and keeping everything up. We’ll hit it full speed next year with the NeSmith Touring Series and give that stuff a shot. We’re going to try to tour and go after the NeSmith points next year.”
