NASCAR Meets Accessible Racing

Madonna Long, participant driver

Brian Hanaford felt sorry for himself. He had his reasons. After a serious head injury ended his career as a champion runner, he was temporarily paralyzed and spent years slowly reclaiming everyday abilities. By the time he was in his forties, he had painstakingly regained most of his physical capacities, but little joy in life. Then, in 2002, the son of New Hampshire racecar driver Harold "Hard Luck" Hanaford was participating in a NASCAR-style drive-along event when he met Cameron Shaw-Doran, who was newly confined to a wheelchair after a spinal cord injury. Hanaford invited him to ride along in the passenger seat of his racecar. That ride changed Hanaford's life.

"Hearing the ecstasy in the sound of his voice and seeing the tears streaming down his face made me realize that life was not just about feeling sorry for yourself," Hanaford said. That moment has driven him ever since to realize a dream of offering that moment of ecstasy to other people with disabilities, and giving them the long-term skills to feel confident behind the wheel of any car, no matter how fast.

Lt. (ret) Ian James Brown, participant driver

"I jumped in over my head and told him [Shaw-Doran] could drive a racecar next time. I didn't realize how big of a deal that really was." It took almost eight years for Hanaford to collect the right combination of donors, volunteers, equipment, and funding to seat disabled drivers in a functioning accessible racecar. Peter Ruprecht, president of Drive-Master, Fairfield, New Jersey, was the key to getting one of the first accessible racecars onto the track. "He listened to my story" Hanaford recalled, "and he said, 'Bring the car down, and we'll put it together and make it work.'"

That car is a $100,000 NASCAR [National Association for Stock Car Racing] Busch Series racecar with a Laughlin chassis and over 400 horsepower under the hood. It is, as Hanaford describes it, "the same type of car that you see driving on TV on Sunday afternoon"with some modifications. The car's manual transmission was stripped out and replaced with a pushbutton automatic. "It's kind of like the Rondo Oven deal; you 'set it and forget it,'" Hanaford quipped. The car has a door, instead of window entry, and interchangeable control options that include a horizontal steering wheel, standard steering wheel, backup pumps, and a second steering wheel and brake on the instructor's side.

Under the moniker "Accessible Racing," Hanaford and his "pit crew" recently produced their first participatory event, bringing five drivers with disabilities onto the track. On June 13, the drivers arrived at North Andover, Massachusetts, to begin their high-speed odyssey. Hanaford explained that Accessible Racing's goal isn't just to provide an experience, but to "teach driver development, so that people will actually leave our experience with more skill than they had when they got there." The participants, all of whom hold driver's licenses, started on an autocross-style skidpad, working with instructors to navigate Volvo sedans around a slalom course of tightly spaced orange cones. After mastering the cones, they took on skills such as race-style trailbreaking, throttle techniques, and high-speed driving, before graduating to the oval track and the racecar.

Tom Muxie, participant driver

Participant driver Colleen Macort of Alabama, described the event in an iReport.com article as an "experience at the VERY TOP of my "Holy cow, I DID IT list." The article was titled, "The BEST TIME OF MY LIFE!" Another participant, Tom Muxie, of Peabody, New Hampshire, told New Hampshire's Eagle-Tribune newspaper, "For me, this is like a dream to be able to do this."

Thus far, Hanaford has relied upon private funding and donated time to modify the car and put on the June event. However, Accessible Racing attained 501c3 non-profit status at the end of June and is seeking donations toward new events. Hanaford envisions producing a mixed-ability racing series, with emphasis on bringing newly discharged disabled veterans onto the track. All cars in the series, he says, will be equipped with hand controls, and then, he says, "if an able-bodied person wants to drive, then welcome to our world, get used to driving with hand controls. And we'll do that on road courses and oval tracks." Drivers in the proposed series would be taught by professional racing instructors, including Ray Paprota, a professional driver on the NASCAR circuit who drives using hand-controls and who is currently Accessible Racing's director of driver development, and "Dynamite" Dave Dion of the Dion Brothers racing team, who instructed drivers on June 13.

When asked about the top speed allowed in the series, Hanaford demurred, saying that the point of his events is ability and skills. Kim Barreda, who drove in the June 13 event, went further. "To me, it's about getting even one person out of bed and into the car," she told the Whitefish Pilot newspaper. "It's a success if one kid with a disability sees this on TV and thinks, 'Maybe I can do that, too.'"

For more information, call Brain Hanaford: 603.412.7069 or visit http://www.accessibleracing.com/

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