FOUNTAIN CITY, Wis. -- Stock car racing is a fickle friend. A racer might collect a checkered flag one week, but struggle to finish within the top-15 the next. They might load the car onto the trailer, after a night’s worth of battling for positions, without a single scratch one week, but the following week …well, all we have to do is check in with someone like James Pehler for the alternative.

In his third season of racing James “Bud” Pehler can now tell everyone that he’s tasted it all. Last year the Fountain City, WI racer basked in the glow of his very first WISSOTA Midwest Modified Division Feature victory. Talking to him after that feature win last year was like talking to a youngster on Christmas morning just after opening the gift for which they’d been waiting all year long. An almost tangible jubilation was flowing out from him like the solar wind from the sun; it touched and enveloped anyone and everything that came near.

This past Friday night, at the 2005 Fox Ridge Speedway season opener, the electrician by day tasted the other end of the spectrum; experiencing a horrific flip down the Fox Ridge back straight the ferocity of which is almost difficult to convey. Viewing the remains of the battered and crumpled race car after the incident it’s a relief to know that he received absolutely no injuries from the incident. The car on the other hand, “Yeah, the car is completely totaled,” explained Pehler early this week.

The flip was scary just to watch, but to be strapped inside the car during the tumble … is an experience that no racer ever REALLY wants to experience. And Pehler was conscious through the entire ride, “The car got just a little loose in turn two,” he explained, of the incident, “then a bump upset the car a bit and the next instant I was in the wall.”

The car climbed the back straight wall with its right side tires before executing a series of barrel rolls and flips down the length of the back straight. Pehler said he knew he was in trouble when all he saw out his window was the dirt surface of the speedway, “I just grabbed the bottom of the steering wheel with both of my hands and held on for the ride.”

Pehler’s jubilant comments to the speedway safety crew about wanting to “do that again” give you an insight into his character.

To Pehler, the flip was just another piece of the game, late Monday evening Pehler and his ‘crew’ were already working on rebuilding and making plans to return to the track as soon as possible, “I everything goes just right,” he sincerely explained, “I could actually be back at the track this coming Friday.”

Like most racers after an incident of this magnitude, the help arrives from those around and willing to pitch in, “There’s my Dad James, my brother-in-law Bill Isakson, Travis Altoff, Randy Fetting,” said Pehler trying to mention everyone who’s helping, “They’re all trying to help out how ever they can or do what ever is needed to get the car ready.”

And then the sign of a true racer rolled off Pehler’s lips as he quickly got back down to the bottom line, “The worst part was, we’d just finally gotten this car figured out. I mean it was working perfectly, ya know?”

To see if Pehler and his black #13 will make it back to the track this week, visit FOX RIDGE SPEEDWAY for all the action. Pit and Grandstand Gates open at 5:00 PM; Hot Laps are at 7:00 PM with racing in all five of the regular season divisions getting underway at 7:30