Published: Sept. 23, 2014
Area drivers coping with fatal crash
Saturday’s events too close to home
By NICHOLAS DETTMANN
Daily News
Joe Bongiorno’s favorite place to be is at a race track.
It’s noisy with drivers revving their engines. It’s busy,
with plenty of commotion by drivers and crews to get ready for the evening. And
it reeks of racing fuel.
In a matter seconds, those sounds came to a sudden stop and
the smells disappeared. Beaver Dam Raceway was silent, stunned.
At about 6 p.m. Saturday, winged sprint car driver Scott
Semmelmann of Brookfield was killed during a practice session for the Bumper to
Bumper IRA Outlaw Sprint Car Series.
He was 47.
Bongiorno, the track’s legends division champion this
season, was at the track Saturday preparing for one of the evening’s support
races.
“After what happened, it was the quietest I had ever heard
any race track,” Bongiorno said. “It was kind of spooky. It was very quiet. It
wasn’t peaceful because there’d been a death.”
The crash has sent a shock wave throughout a close-knit
community of short-track racers, crew members and fans just one month after
Kevin Ward Jr. was struck and killed by NASCAR star Tony Stewart in upstate New
York. Ward died after he got out of his car and confronted Stewart, upset of an
on-track incident, while cars were still circulating the track.
“I just hope it doesn’t shed a bad light on motorsports,”
said D.J. Ross, a legends driver at Beaver Dam. “As drivers, we know there’s a
risk. It just sucks that it had to happen.”
During what is called the “hot laps” session or practice,
Semmelmann made contact with another car, flipped a couple times and crashed
into the concrete wall at the end of the back straightaway. He was traveling in
excess of 100 mph when he made contact with the other car.
Police said Semmelmann, a veteran racer, died instantly. The
accident has been deemed a racing accident. “We didn’t hear any cars on the
track for five or 10 minutes and qualifying was supposed to start,” Ross said.
“I didn’t see the accident,” he added. “But when I saw they
weren’t moving anything, that’s when you knew something was wrong.”
The rest of the racing program was canceled. Beaver Dam
Raceway General Manager Carolyn Mueller and Bumper to Bumper IRA Outlaw Sprint
Car Series President Steve Sinclair canceled the event “out of respect for the
family and friends of Semmelmann,” according to a news release from the track
after the crash.
Fans, drivers and crew members were offered an opportunity
for a refund, but had the option to donate the money to the family, which most
did.
Mueller and Sinclair have declined further comment out of respect
for the family.
“I didn’t want to race that night and I’m glad we didn’t,”
Ross said.
“It’s almost a surreal feeling,” he added. “You didn’t want
to believe it.”
Semmelmann is the first race car driver to lose his life on
a Wisconsin race track since Thomas Nevoso in 2011 at Columbus 151 Speedway.
However, it was determined Nevoso died from natural causes (heart attack).
The last driver in Wisconsin to die because of injuries
suffered in a race was Bill Grant on July 19, 2009, while racing a go-kart at
Road America in Elkhart Lake.
It was the first time Semmelmann had competed with the
series this season and the first time since July 20, 2013, at Wilmot Raceway.
It was the third-to-last race of the season for the series,
which travels throughout the Midwest.
The series has announced it plans to race its final two
events as scheduled. The first will be Friday at Luxemburg Speedway, followed
by Saturday at Dodge County Fairgrounds, which is about three miles east of
Beaver Dam Raceway.
Accidents are a part of racing. Unfortunately, so are fatal
accidents. However, for area drivers, having a fatal crash occur at their home
track was an eerie feeling, instead of hearing about the incidents from afar.
“When you’re there and you see all the events that take
place during this time, you look at it completely different,” Bongiorno said.
“You think about all the people there. After I saw the family and seeing what
they were going through, it put a whole new spin on things.”
To make matters more depressing around the tragedy, Nelson
Stewart, Tony Stewart’s father, was at the track Saturday to race his legends
car.
Bongiorno, who wants to race sprint cars someday, was
scheduled to do a test Oct. 13. That plan has been aborted.
“It’s always been my dream to race sprint cars; it still
is,” Bongiorno said.
“I’m not doing that anymore,” he added about his test
session. My parents don’t feel comfortable with me driving sprint cars at this
point in my life.”
“As a race car driver, you have to accept things like this
can happen. I don’t have a fear of driving sprint cars.”
As for the race track, it is done for the season, which
makes the timing all that much worse.
“That’s where the healing process can start; get back in the
race car,” Ross said.
The 2015 season won’t start at Beaver Dam until late April.
“There’s never a good time for things like this to happen,”
Bongiorno said. “We will have to think about this; it’s going to be hard for us
to move on.”
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