There are eight laps to go in the Sioux Chief PowerPEX 250 at the Elko Speedway, and Chase Purdy is leading the pack.
As other racers gained on him down the stretch, Purdy started to smell something like an electrical fire in his Bama Buggies No. 8 car. However, it was not an electrical fire.
After contact with another car, the drive shaft popped through the fuel line under the car, came through the floorboard and knocked the fuel line, causing the inside of the car to burst into flames.
“It wasn’t fun. I was leading the race with eight laps to go, and I thought I was going to catch my break in a kind of a dry spell, you know, like we’ve been so close,” Purdy said. “I think the announcers said they’d never seen that.”
The then-19-year-old was able to climb out of the window and run away as the car burned in the middle of the track. Purdy’s chance at his first major win — literally — went up in flames.
“I just remember thinking, ‘Thank God I had on my fire suit,’” he said. “It gives me up to, like, a minute and a half to get out of the car before I start to really feel like I’m burning, but I had burns all on my neck and my wrist and hands. That was not fun. I definitely took off my seatbelt as fast as I could and hopped out of there. The fire thing got to me a little bit because I’m literally burning, and I’m trying to get out.”
Most college freshmen can share their own list of accidents and fender benders, but those don’t happen at 120 miles per hour with other cars at either bumper.
Purdy, now a first-year student at Ole Miss, sits and recalls his high-speed crashes with a grin as if they were minor paint scratches in a parking lot. For him, it’s all part of what he signed up for. That signature was inked at an early age as Purdy says he’s wanted to race for as long as he can remember.
As soon as he started walking, Purdy would find anything at the center of a room, like a coffee table or armoire, and run around it as fast as he could all day. He’s been making left turns all of his life.
Charlie Purdy, his father, said, “We would joke about it when he got into racing like, ‘That’s all he’s doing now,’ but he would do it until he got dizzy and just (fall) out.”
Purdy’s been behind the wheel ever since, starting with go-carts and moving to stock cars at 14 and appearing for his first NASCAR-sanctioned team at 16.
He has made his way up the ladder quickly with several accolades in his short career. After being named NASCAR Whelen All-American Series National Rookie of the Year, Purdy was selected as one of nine drivers in the NASCAR Next program, an initiative promoting the top young drivers in the nation, in 2017 and 2018.
The freshman, born in Tuscaloosa and raised in Meridian, made a name for himself with his aggressive racing style, adopted from some of his favorite racers. Purdy said he aspires to race like Kyle Larson and Jimmie Johnson.
His driving style comes with risks. Purdy has been in his fair share of crashes in his young career, including a major one at the Talladega General Tire 200 on the final lap. With a cluster of cars racing three-wide, a tap to the rear bumper sent Purdy into the wall hard. He was transported to the hospital immediately with spinal shock.
“That was kind of like my wake-up call for me and I’ve never really been hurt in the race car,” he said. “That was kind of like, ‘This sport’s dangerous. Like, I did not see that happening,’ and it speeds up to 109 miles an hour. It really, really takes the breath out of you.”
The crashes aren’t the only tough part of being a professional driver, as he’s had to sacrifice much of his social life to race.
“I never got to go to all the cool parties on the weekends and never got to go do that. I missed a lot of events, family vacations. You know, it sucks,” he said. “Your family’s out there and laying out on the beach, and you’re sweating your butt off at a race track, but that’s why I signed up for it.”
The freshman spent most of his adolescent life traveling for races every weekend.
“It takes away a lot of your social life. I lost connection with few of my friends and stuff. I’m still friends with them but not as close as I probably would have been had I stayed in school a lot more,” Purdy said. “I felt like I lived in an airplane all the time…I don’t even think I had a junior year in high school. I did homeschool, but it was real easy. You know, you can just kind of skim your way around that.”
Purdy took a year off from racing after enrolling at Ole Miss last winter, hoping to get acclimated to life as a college student, but he said he’s looking forward to getting back on track soon.
With all of the crashes and time put in to his craft, Purdy said he’s never been more eager to race again.
“I’ve thought about it, but (racing) never scared me. (It) truly never made me hesitant at all or race car or any kind of decision making,” Purdy said. “The goal for the next season would be to have a deal and be doing something completely out of the ordinary that no other driver’s done. hat would be to be full-time on campus, living at college and racing at the same time. I think that’s what speaks volumes in many ways.”
