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TBK Light's 2013 ARCA pick 'ems champion!

For the second year in a row, OldAsphalt takes the ARCA pick 'ems crown!

Oh yeah ...bring it all back to Charlotte!!

Oh yeah ...bring it all back to Charlotte!!

It was behind the wheel of his NASCAR Sportsman car at Charlotte in ’95 that Steven was thrown in to maturity with a crash that claimed the life of Russell Phillips.

"I really didn’t want to race again, it spooked me out. I had my car here for a long time. Once I got rid of it I started getting over it – that part. I read a lot of articles about him, he was a Christian person, and what made it worse than anything was that we were parked beside of him – the whole week.

"He was a nice guy. To my you know it was a racing accident. He had already fell back from the pole and we was coming up through the pack, me and Ronnie Sewell, we was coming into three and the wreck happened coming off four, the original wreck that is. I stayed low and Ronnie went around me on the outside. I got there about 300; 500 yards from the wreck and my spotter said go high. I went high, and I don’t know if he thought I was going to stay low or what but when I went high, he (Phillips) came around and we hit. Then we wheel hopped the cars and he hit the wall."

The accident sheared the top of Phillips car off as the roof impacted at an angle with the retaining fence. "I remember seeing, kind of remember him." Steven recalls of the wreckage. "I remember seeing the top was off the car and that’s when another car slid into me and spun me back around. But, I really don’t think I ever did see him. If I did, that would have got me.

"More or less what it did to me was made me think, If you go out here in your car, are you ready to go to heaven if you don’t come back in. It made me do a lot of thinking, more or less in that perspective, ‘cause I didn’t want to die right then – I didn’t want to die at 21 years old or 22."

It was an accident that would have many drivers hanging their helmets up. Charlotte Motor Speedway officials announced the division would not return and replaced it with the ARCA series. As for Steven, he would not let the incident affect him as he concentrated on Greenville-Pickens for 1996 and adding his name to the wall of champions famous at the South Carolina track.