10/21/2025
🏁Long post ahead! PASS 400 weekend recap.
Well - PASS 400 weekend was fun until it wasn’t.
Maddy started 11th in her heat on Saturday and finished 9th. Unfortunately, only the top 7 from each heat made the race, so we then had to prepare for a consi.
Sunday morning the crew threw some changes at Jaycee (her car), and they seemed to work - Maddy started 5th in the consi and finished 2nd! That put her starting 30th out of 44 for the feature.
During the feature, under first caution, she came in and the crew made a tire pressure adjustment. She went back out, tail end of the field, and over the next 70 or so laps, worked her way up to 13th.
5 laps to go, we were sure we were going to end up with a top 15, which would have been like a win in our book! Running 13th, all hell broke loose on lap 95 (🤦🏼♀️) just in front of her and cars started spinning. She had nowhere to go and while trying to avoid the melee and get through the smoke, she ended up door slamming (her right side to his right side) into the 25 of Landon Tapley, who she raced with in karts for several years when they were younger.
After the crash, it took Maddy a good 25-30 seconds to respond to us on the radio when we kept asking her, “are you ok?!” She had been knocked out cold from the impact. First thing she said when she came to was, “pretty sure I just got a concussion….” She restarted the car and started to take off but then saw flames down near her feet and said over the radio, “I see fire, I’m on fire!” We told her to stop and get out NOW. After unbuckling and climbing out, and helping the track crew extinguish the flames, she had to sit on the tar and just take a breather.
The tow truck driver said she “fell asleep” in the truck on the way back to the pit area. The ambulance crew at the track looked her over and said she needed to go to the Emergency Room, and to keep her awake on the way there! She was able to describe what happened, from her perspective, what she did to try and avoid it, and who she ended up hitting. She had no idea that she had been knocked out for a few seconds. She said it made her so sad, knowing it was her kart buddy Landon that she slammed into, and that there was nothing she could do to prevent it.
Maddy had an MRI at the ER and her initial thought was true - she indeed had a concussion. No school, work, or driving for a couple of days, and plenty of rest was prescribed.
The impact caused a big bruise and scraping on her left bicep from her seat, some bruising and scraping on her shoulders from her belts, and a bump and cut on her forehead (unsure how that happened, other than from the foam rubbing hard?) from her helmet.
Jaycee is definitely worse for wear but thank god it was the last race of the season - we’re in no hurry to fix anything. The crew managed to wedge her in to the trailer at the track Sunday night and that’s where she still is for now.
Thank you to all of Maddy’s sponsors for an amazing 2025 season - she finished 6th in points and earned Rookie of the Year honors at Wiscasset, and ran a couple of races at her home track Oxford. We couldn’t have done it without you: Teamsters Local Union 340; 290 Main Street; Maine Modern Tile; Flanders Electric; Wallace Home Improvement; Gordon’s Property Management; K&K Property Management; Meserve Mechanical.
Looking forward to 2026 but for the moment - going to enjoy the off season! 🏁🏁🖤🤍9️⃣5️⃣
