Here’s a little tip, if you are at a NASCAR race and a piece of debris goes flying in the air and into the stands, do not try and catch it. Watching the final laps of the 1997 Daytona 500 from the backstretch grandstand, Ed Suders of Chambersburg, Pennsylvania was busy rooting on his favorite, Dale Earnhardt.

With ten laps to go, the unthinkable happened for Suders and all the other Earnhardt fans. Racing for the lead with Jeff Gordon, Earnhardt was turned into the outside wall by Dale Jarrett. The black No. 3 began to roll over and was clipped by Ernie Irvan who was running closely behind. The contact sent Irvan’s hood flying into the air and into Suders’ lap.

“I was mad because my man was upside down,” Suders told HardcoreRaceFans.com. “I was thinking, ‘This can’t be happening again.’ Next thing I knew the hood was in front of my face and that was it.”

Suders explained he never saw the hood coming towards him until it was three feet in front of his face. The hood broke his right arm as he blocked his face from the large piece of sheet metal falling from the sky.

“Two women from section R got it,” Suders said of the hood that hit him. “I got teased at work for that. They told me I didn’t get my arm broke from the hood, they said I got my arm broke by the two women trying to get the hood.”

After being treated at a medical center behind the backstretch grandstands, Suders was then transported into the track to speak with speedway officials about the incident.

“They actually took me from the backstretch on the ambulance to the infield,” the Pennsylvania-native went on to say. “Garth Green was the safety consultant and he actually asked me what to do. I said you have to do something with the hood and the trunks. I don’t know if you remember when they put the tethers on, well I’m the one they put the tethers on for to keep the hoods and lids from flying off.”

With so much attention placed on protecting fans and increasing safety at the tracks following Carl Edwards’ incident at Talladega last month, Suders is one of the few fans out there that can relate.

“That’s the chance you take when you go to any sporting event,” he argued. “It tells you on the back of your ticket not responsible for any injuries. If you are doing what you’re supposed to do and you’re where you’re supposed to be at, there is really nothing much they can do about that. It’s fate.”

Fate had it for Ed to be at that race on February 16, 1997. After going to many races at Daytona with his father as a child, this event marked the first race he had attended since his father’s death in 1967.

“It was my first race since I was kid back in the 60s,” Suders explained. “I had just come off a cruise in Mexico and it was 85 degrees in Mexico and it was 40 degrees in Daytona, I was freezing,” he said with a chuckle.

“We went down to the Firecracker 400 when I was a kid,” he recalled of his past. “I have movie films when I was down there when they used to open the starter’s stand and let you go down onto the track, ‘60-‘66.”

Ed’s love for racing grew out of his father’s passion for the sport. While his dad pulled for Richard Petty, he opted for Fireball Roberts. Along with the stars of NASCAR, Suders and his father often hit the local short tracks scattered around Pennsylvania and Maryland.

“We’ve got a lot of local tracks back home,” Suders added. “Hagerstown Speedway, Waynesboro, the old St. Thomas quarter-mile dirt track. That’s the reason why – I mean he grew up racing. As a matter of fact, a guy that raced at Hagerstown, his garage was right down below our apartment in Chambersburg – Number 47 Bobby Burns.”

When asked what attracts him to racing, Suders answer was quick and to the point – speed.

“I’d like to see them take the restrictor plates off them in Daytona and Talladega,” he said. “Like Earnhardt told Gordon years ago, take the plates off and we’ll see where the men and boys are.”

In addition to going to the races, Suders is also an avid collector of Dale Earnhardt die-cast cars.

“I have every car the old man ever drove in 1/24 and 1/64-scale – every one of them,” he said. “There’s not one I don’t have. Matter of fact I even have cars that when he sponsored Ernie Irvan in 1986 when he got into Winston Cup, I have two cars of his that Dale sponsored him when Ernie got started.”

He went on to say he has them in boxes and while his kids may get something out of them someday, he has no plan on selling them.

A true Hardcore Race Fan, Suders never let the incident that fateful February afternoon keep him from the races. He has remained loyal to the sport and continues to attend races. Over the years he has visited, Daytona, Dover, Richmond – going twice a year since 1997, Atlanta, Charlotte and Pocono. He has also been to the tracks in Las Vegas and Kansas, but has not seen a race there.

“I want to go to them all before I die,” he said with a smile.

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