Dirt
Road to
Recovery
Limited Drag Radial’s Jason
Rueckert plotting return after a
disappointing crash at Radial Fest
By Josh Hachat
For 30 years, Jason Rueckert’s
stunning 1982 Cutlass didn’t suffer
anything more than a scratch. Along
with that type of fortune, Rueckert developed
a certain affinity for a car that’s treated
him well for so many years.
The unfortunate part is the turbocharged
Oldsmobile isn’t scratch-free anymore. But it also
has Rueckert more determined than ever to get
the Cutlass running better than ever — and looking
just as good as has for the past three decades.
While making a test hit before Radial Fest at
Huntsville Dragway in late May, Rueckert crashed
into the wall on the top end — on a run shaping
up to be a career-best, no less — putting the first
major damage onto the car. The good news is the
damage wasn’t massive and the car is already on
a swift and impressive road to recovery.
“It made me sick that I had it 30 years and
I had never wrecked it, not even in the street,”
says Rueckert, a Midwest Regional Manager at
VP Racing Fuels. “I can play it back in my head
a million times. I’ve slid
the car before and it’s
always recovered, it’s always
come back out of
it. It’s been unbelievable
the amount of people who
have reached out, and it
will come back out bigger
and better. It’s already a
cool car, and hopefully
it will be even a little
nicer now.”
Rueckert is updating
the components and
technology to the car with
plans of jumping into the
4.10s when he returns,
which he hopes happens
at the Shakedown in
September.
In replaying the run
over and over again,
Rueckert is likely most
upset it happened on a
run that was shaping up
to be a killer one.
Using the same tuneup
from his 4.24 pass, Rueckert had a 1.09 60-foot
time and went 2.82 to 330 – both career-bests
for the car – before running into trouble. Rueckert
started to slide, and despite a furious effort,
slammed the front of the car into the wall at
130 mph, hitting the side and grazing the back
of the car.
“I drove it back to the left and eased it back,
and started sliding that way,” Rueckert says. “I was
wheeling on it and the skid marks show a pretty
long power slide on the driver’s side. I just kind
of slid for a while and I saw the wall coming. I
tried to kick it back to the left, screamed a few
obscenities and just saw it coming.”
Rueckert immediately radioed he was fine injury-wise
to his fiancé, Kyla Lachat, and it turned
out the car escaped significant harm.
The door was crinkled and crunched, but several
major aspects, including the turbos, were
relatively fine. From there, Rueckert went to work
on getting the car repaired — and he had plenty
of offers for help, which blew him away.
“I’ve had tons of people reach out for help,”
Rueckert says. “I didn’t even get back to the pit
PHOTOGRAPHS BY JAMES SISK, CHRIS SEARS AND KYLA LACHAT
22 | Drag Illustrated | DragIllustrated.com Issue 158