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Super Stocks Driver Young Survives Scary Crash, Looks to Make Comeback Soon

By Chuck Corder

Greg Young has many memories of Five Flags Speedway he recalls fondly.

He also has had other days at Pensacola’s high banks where he recalls little.

Opening Day, March 25, this year was one of the latter experiences.

Young, 49, was knocked unconscious after a vicious collision with the Turn 1 wall during the Super Stocks feature.

Ask the 25-year racing veteran about that fateful day and the details still remain fuzzy.

Young remembers passing Brandon Harris and another car on the inside off Turn 4. As Harris fought back for the position, he clipped Young’s right, rear quarter panel and sent Young careening into the wall not once, but twice.

“I don’t trust being around (Harris),� Young said. “He has done other people the same way by the way he drives. There’s enough stuff going on out there with race accidents, that there’s no sense deliberately doing that.

“I’ve had people pass me like I passed him and I just let it go. I’m impressed when they get by me so fast. It was just a cheap shot. It’s life and death, and I could’ve very easily died that night.� That’s why he still harbors hard feelings toward Harris. The double donut Young’s black No. 44 left on the Turn 1 wall will remain there for eternity.

“I hit the wall hard that second time and it knocked me out,� he said.

The next thing that flashed in Young’s mind is one of the emergency medical personnel picking up his shattered helmet and saying, “That helmet’s going with me. He told my girlfriend to get in the front seat and we cut out. As soon as the ambulance started moving, I passed out again.�

Once they reached a local emergency room, MRIs were done on Young’s chest, head and abdomen. Everything check out there, but Young did sport five cracked ribs and a partially collapsed lung about the size of tennis ball.

He spent the night at the hospital, and the following morning Young’s lung had inflated to its normal size.

“I thank the good Lord above every day. He kept his hands on me,� Young said.

His time at the hospital was crystal clear. Here’s where things get hazy.

What Young still has no recollection of is what he did between the crash and getting in the ambulance that left the famed half-mile, asphalt oval.

He actually removed all of his equipment — helmet, gloves, glasses — unbuckled his seat belts and shinnied out of the car. He propped himself on the door jamb for a moment with his arms draped across the roof before he walked to the gurney.

Medical technicians attempted to put a neck brace on the International Paper electrical superintendent, but the claustrophobic Young waved them off.

He remembers none of this.

“That’s the first time I’ve been knocked out in a racecar,� Young said.

Which is saying a lot. Young broke three vertebrae 15 years ago after another violent crash. Young’s car broke a left rear axle and shot over Turn 3. This was several years before the wall around the track had been built.

“It was like a 40-foot drop,� Young said. “I went off airborne and pirouetted.�

Foolishly or not, he didn’t even go to the hospital that night.

Young’s emergency room visit and overnight stay after his latest scare forced him to miss a week of work. He immediately considered hanging up his helmet and racing gloves, and calling it quits with racing.

“I told my girlfriend ‘I quit. I’m not doing this anymore,’ � Young said. “The next morning she told me I needed to wait, no rash decisions.�

That’s why after he finishes his recovery in the next few weeks Young will be ready to work on his still-damaged Super Stock and return to the track.

He’s not quite ready for the alternative.

“I could sell it and get me a boat and play on the water,� Young said. “That’s a dream I haven’t made come true yet.�

Memories on the water can wait. There are still pavement dreams Young wants to fulfill.

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