9/22/2013
Jack Walker
Need for speed
Mark and Jennifer Walker faced a parents’ biggest fear after a July 6 car crash involving their 12-year-old son in Canaan.
Even before the accident, the longtime Nashua residents, who recently moved to Bow, had heard from the critics. They expect to hear from even more in the next few years. After all, it isn’t every parent’s belief that a seventh-grader should be driving a race car.
Jack Walker has been racing since age 6. He has been successful at every level – Quarter Midget, Tiger Sprint, Sportsman, Four Cylinder – winning 47 of the 186 races he’s entered, including four track championships in go-karts.
He won his first Four-Cylinder Daredevil Division race in 2012. Then he opened this summer with another at Canaan Fair Speedway and appeared ready to dominate the field this season. Three races later, his season was over courtesy of a bump and a flip.
Two cars battling for first place got into each other in front of Walker, who sat in third. One of the cars trying to hold it together shot down from the high side to the lower line of the asphalt track and clipped just enough of Walker’s fender to send him flying.
“All I thought was, ‘Oh boy, this is going to hurt,’” Walker said about his car flipping twice. “Then I was just thinking, ‘Stop rolling, please.’ I couldn’t believe that just happened.”
Mark and Jennifer Walker were in the stands watching. Jennifer was shooting video when the accident took place.
“Oh, my God,” was her initial reaction. “I think it was shock, more than anything, that it was happening.”
But she didn’t stop filming. She recorded until the car stopped before running to the nearest official in order to hear radio communication from the track.
“I’m pretty certain that his car is safe,” she said, stressing the driving and safety courses the Daredevil drivers go through. “I’ve seen other people wreck in such fantastic ways that look just awful and they walk away from it. Maybe if it had been the first ever wreck I’d seen, ever, I might have flipped out a little more than I did.”
When Jack exited the car on his own, he gave the thumbs-up sign and the crowd erupted. His only injury was a small bruise from his helmet chin strap.
His No. 95J Volkswagen Golf wasn’t as lucky – the frame twisted enough to end his Canaan season. It isn’t stopping him from taking the track again this year, though, and neither is the accident.
He was shaken up that day, but didn’t want to stay off the track. With his Daredevil ride too banged up to finish the season, he needed to shift gears to keep racing in 2013 – returning to his go-kart after roughly two years away from the open-wheel ride.
Walker finished sixth in his first race of the fall on Sept. 14 at Londonderry Raceway, and has races scheduled for Sept. 28 and every Saturday in October.
“I ask him every day since the accident if he still wants to do this,” Mark Walker said. “And …”
“Yes!” Jack says, cutting off his dad.
There’s no fear in this shy preteen, whose friends at Elm Street Middle School were in awe that he could drive a car without a license. Now his new friends at Bow Memorial Middle School will be shocked to learn whom they’re sitting next to.
Walker has come a long way since his first trip to Londonderry Raceway as a 5-year-old – when Dad looked down at him and said, “Do you want to do that?”
The answer then was just as emphatic as it was after his summer crash: “Yes!”
“I never thought when I brought Jack to Londonderry when he was 5 that six years later, he’d be in a car,” said Mark, who taught his son how to drive go-karts in the Nashua High School North parking lot. “I figured we’d be in go-karts.
“But if you really want a shot at doing this professionally, you’ve got to keep progressing. One thing I kept being told was that as soon as you can get your son into an automobile with suspension, you do it so they can learn how the suspension feels and reacts.”
Driving a real car or not, Jack is still a child. He gets giddy talking about his favorite race car drivers – NASCAR’s Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Hudson native Joey Polewarczyk Jr., who is a star on the American Canadian Tour.
He aspires to reach the levels the Juniors have conquered. Neither critics nor crashes will keep him from achieving his goals.
George Scione can be reached at 594-6475 or gscione@nashuatelegraph.com. Also, follow Scione on Twitter (@Telegraph_BigG).
Article Credit: George Scione, TheTelegraph
Submitted By: Jennifer Walker
