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Watch my video regarding this crash here.
NOTE: THE FOLLOWING ARTICLE CONTAINS AN IN DEPTH LOOK INTO AN ESPECIALLY DISTURBING FATAL CRASH. READER DISCRETION ADVISED.
Back in the nineties, NASCAR’s upcoming stars had a couple ways of working their way up. They could compete in the Busch North/Winston West series and see if they got noticed, they could work their way up the ladder through the late models and then to the Trucks when they came around in 1995, they could go to the Dash Series or maybe the All Pro Series or regionals, or they could compete in the ASA or ARCA, and try to find success so perhaps an owner could give them a big break. Or, up until 1995, they could try the Sportsman Division.
In 1989, the Sportsman Division commenced. It ran the Charlotte Motor Speedway exclusively in its first year, but started running at New Hampshire and Richmond the next year. 1991 saw New Hampshire get switched out for Pocono, and Richmond was dropped after that season, but Charlotte continued to hold the bulk of Sportsman races.
Sportsman cars, which were actually just old Winston Cup and Busch cars, some of which dated back to the 1970s and by rule none of which were newer than three years old, were also notable for how much they had had their speed restricted by their two-barrel carburetors. For reference, the NASCAR Sportsman lap record at Charlotte was Wally Fowler for one of the October 1994 races, with a time of 33.926 seconds at 159.170mph. That weekend, Ward Burton set the pole for the Mello Yello 500 with a time of 29.070, at 185.759mph, a track record at the time.
Russell Phillips was a mainstay whenever the series stopped by Charlotte. Usually running a white #57 car, Russell was a local driver looking to ascend the ladder.
Russell Lee Phillips, nicknamed “Bubby”, was born March 6, 1969 to Robert and Sadie Phillips, the youngest of four. From the get-go, Russell, who eventually settled down in Mint Hill, a suburb of Charlotte, was a fan of racing, and after running the local short tracks for a couple of years, he moved up to the NASCAR Sportsman Division in 1990.
By trade, Russell worked for the family trucking business, where he was the lead detailer. He was also a volunteer firefighter in his hometown, ironically being remembered as a squeamish individual by his co-workers who, though willing to suit up if he had to, was more comfortable directing traffic. He also served as a youth minister at a local Baptist church and offered his services to the Fast Track Driving School, through which many Sportsman drivers got their licenses. Russell was married in 1993 to a young woman named Jennifer whom he’d met during a pit road walk in 1990.
The NASCAR Sportsman Division, from its getgo, had many detractors. The most frequent argument appears to have been that simply slowing down the cars was not enough to make the series safe. While the cars possessed every safety mechanism required in the Winston Cup at the time sans roof flaps, driver injury and death were alarmingly frequent due to the lack of driver experience on large tracks. What would often be a single car spin in the Winston Cup Series or a two car collision in ARCA could easily become a jarring six car pileup in the Sportsman Division.
The first Sportsman fatality was in 1990, when 27-year-old newcomer David Gaines spun in the midst of a multi-car crash during a practice session and was struck in the rear at full speed by Steve McEachern of Arizona, sending McEachern upside down. While McEachern, an off-road veteran attempting to make a foray into stock car racing, survived with injuries to his hands, Gaines, a race car builder and engineer out of Goldston, North Carolina, was pronounced dead on arrival to the hospital of head injuries.
In May of 1991, the injuries continued, with Tom D’Eath and Ed Gartner, Jr. both breaking bones in an accident. Perhaps the most well known injury, however, was that of Phillip Ross. Ross was involved in a large crash in the pit area and injured his neck in addition to suffering burns.
The car was surprisingly still salvageable, but Ross retired from the sport immediately thereafter. The car was sold to J. Gary Batson, a 40-year-old restaurateur and occasional racer out of Travelers Rest, South Carolina. He jumped at the chance to race at the Charlotte Motor Speedway.
During the last chance qualifier for a race in May of 1992, Floridian Neal Connell, Jr. was going side by side with Batson for tenth when the two collided while avoiding a spinning car. The pair struck the wall, and Batson’s car was pinned driver’s-side-down against the fence, eventually coming to a stop like that in the quadoval.
Howard Driver Obit Defuniak Springs Fl
Evdo a. Connell was unhurt, and while Batson flashed a thumbs up to officials to show that he was also unhurt, the situation quickly turned terrifying when a massive fire started. It was extinguished in about a minute, but Batson suffered fatal burns from which he died the next morning. Due to the car’s history with catching fire and the fact that it had come to rest in the way it did, it was ruled by most to be a freak accident, though the iffy response time received some criticism.
Robbie Faggart was the series’ inaugural champion that year, as the series had mostly been an exhibition series up until that point. During the final race, Mark Purcell suffered severe injuries in a crash.
1993 went somewhat smoothly for the series, and Russell Phillips got some TV time during some of the races, as the Sportsman events were usually shown either as short highlight reels or on tape delay, though they were sometimes shown live. 1994 saw a few injuries, such as Red Everette suffering minor burns in a particularly heavy crash and an axle flying off of Rounder Saverance’s car and injuring two crew members, but all in all went much more smoothly than 1992 had. For the first five of the calendar’s seven races, 1995 had gone about as smoothly as 1993, with the year’s largest crash to that point being a prang that left Don Satterfield with a broken pinky finger.
Whenever the Sportsman Division stopped by Charlotte, it usually ran two or three races. In the case of the fall of 1995, two were planned, one, called the Winston 100, on Wednesday night (October 4th) and the other, the Duron Paints and Wallcoverings 100, on Saturday afternoon (October 7th). Russell showed up to these events in an Oldsmobile. His chassis, an ex-Bobby Allison car with an ex-Lake Speed body, was prepared with the assistance of James Finch and his team, Phoenix Racing. At the time, Finch operated part time Cup and Busch teams, both with Jeff Purvis as his driver. Russell’s older brother John worked for Finch’s Busch team as a tire changer, and Russell himself was the jackman. Longtime Finch crew chief Mark Reno, who ironically had been the owner of the car Steve McEachern had crashed in 1990, was known to have directly assisted the Phillips’ family team.
The #57 Hendrix Office Machines Oldsmobile Cutlass qualified on pole for the first race, the Winston 100. It was Phillips’ first pole in the series. He had been a competent midfielder in years past, but in 1995, had started to find some speed, frequently qualifying in the top 10 and remaining in the top 15 for most of the race. However, Russell, whose best finish in a Sportsman race had been eighth, would have to wait a few days for the race, as Hurricane Opal struck the area, washing out the race. The race was rescheduled for Friday at 4pm.
The intent had actually been to broadcast the Winston 100 live, but due to the rainout this broadcast never happened. The network recording the race, World Sports, instead decided to tape the race and show it later on tape delay.
October 6th proved to be a rainy day, and qualifying for the Duron Paints and Wallcoverings 100 was rained out. However, the weather cleared up as the day progressed, so the Winston 100 started on time.
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When the race started, Phillips was able to keep up and led the race’s first two laps, but started to fall back. He was able to slot in in about tenth and held station there. On lap 17, the #83 Ford of Virginia’s Joe Gaita hit the #91 Oldsmobile of Tennessean Morris Bice and they went spinning off of turn four. Ronnie Sewell, driving the #20 Chevrolet, saw Bice’s spinning car make its way back onto the banking, and he rose up to the high line. Russell’s spotter, his older brother John, told him to go high, as did the spotter for the black #99 Midway Auto Parts Chevrolet Monte Carlo of 21 year old Steven Howard, a Sportsman newcomer from Greer, South Carolina. Howard had gotten his Sportsman start the year prior, and had done moderately well, with a few top 15 runs.
As Howard hit the brakes on his car and ascended the track, he was encountered by Phillips, who was both going at a higher rate of speed and for reasons unclear was moving down a lane. It appeared as if he had seen Bice’s car come back up the track and was attempting to speed by instead of avoid it.
Officials told Steven that the crash had been on Russell, who appears to have realized a crash was imminent, indicated by his Oldsmobile making a quick jerk to the right at the last moment. Steven, according to a 1996 interview, disagreed, saying the crash was on him. Whose fault it was was quickly made irrelevant however, as the resulting crash was the worst in NASCAR’s history.
Russell’s left front wheel collided with the right rear of Howard, and Howard’s momentum from climbing the banking sent both cars up the track and into the wall, whereupon both cars went flying, Howard on his drivers door and Phillips passenger door down against the catchfence. With little reinforcement, the #57 car’s roof collapsed, and Phillips died instantly of catastrophic head injuries. Howard’s car slid on its side for a couple of yards before flipping back onto its wheels, while Phillips’ car did a complete inversion, it too landing right side up. The two cars skidded into the quadoval together before coming to a halt.
Howard quickly evacuated his car once it had stopped. He was badly shaken, but not seriously injured. Bice and Gaita were both able to refire their cars and drive away.
Response to the accident was swift, as within a few seconds of the cars coming to a halt, a marshal holding a fire extinguisher rushed over. As a precaution, they emptied it on the car, then looked to see if there was any chance of reviving Russell. After establishing that there was not, the marshal gestured to a colleague, and then looked at their watch to pinpoint the time of death, around 4:15pm, following which a brief investigation into the crash was started.
NSFL CONTENT AHEAD (DISTURBING CONTENT, VIOLENT CONTENT)
THESE ARE ALL CONFIRMED DETAILS OF THE ACCIDENT AND ARE NOT BASED SOLELY ON HEARSAY; IF YOU WISH TO SKIP THIS SECTION, ENTER “END OF NSFL CONTENT” IN YOUR SEARCH BAR AND SKIP TO IT
What the marshal found was a gruesome scene. Upon striking the catchfence, the Oldsmobile’s roof had been sheared off, and Russell had been savagely decapitated and dismembered by a caution light which had easily pierced the collapsing windshield. The photographers in the turn four stands, which were otherwise mostly vacant, had been subject to a terrible sight, as had the quadoval spectators. Several items had gotten stuck in the catchfence itself, including the car’s window net and, most horrifyingly, Russell’s right hand, still in its glove.
Officials quickly got to work, putting up sheets along the catchfence to prevent the spectators from witnessing the cleanup, a task they carried out with surgical gloves. One bystander in the pit lane remembered seeing fans laying on the ground in the stands and thinking that fans had been injured when in fact they had fainted. The scene remains the most brutal in NASCAR history.
Below is a link to an uncensored copy of the first photo. It is extremely graphic. View at your own risk.
END OF NSFL CONTENT
After a quick preliminary investigation by future NASCAR President Mike Helton, track president Humpy Wheeler, and several more officials had ended and the evidence required for a later inquest had been collected, organizers decided to continue with the race. 33 minutes after the crash, at a few minutes before 5:00 p.m., the race restarted. Gary Laton of Albemarle, NC took the lead on lap 59 and held off Stanfield, NC native Lester Lesneski to win the event. Lesneski would go on to win the second race of the doubleheader, conducted the next day, in which Laton dropped out due to a busted suspension. Neither driver mentioned the crash in victory lane. The Winston 100’s planned tape delayed airing was quickly cancelled, and the race itself was never shown. A few weeks after the accident, Humpy Wheeler asked John Phillips what he thought should be done with the series, to which John, who had reportedly attempted to coax Russell into sticking to the short tracks, replied, “You don’t want to hear what I think.” (Charlotte Observer)
The NASCAR Sportsman Division, as it was, was canned by the Charlotte Motor Speedway in late November, with the death of Phillips serving as the final straw. Its dates during the May Charlotte weekend were replaced by ARCA races. A few races held in 1996 at Greenville-Pickens, the Nashville Fairgrounds, and Myrtle Beach were sanctioned by NASCAR using the same ‘old car’ format. These races are sometimes referred to as Sportsman races.
In the meantime, the USAR Pro Cup, later called the Hooters Pro Cup, also using old NASCAR and ARCA equipment, was having sort of a ‘trial year’ in 1996. The season was successful, and the Pro Cup – which thankfully stuck to tracks no more than a mile – commenced in 1997. The Pro Cup eventually became the CARS series, which still operates today using late models and super late models. NASCAR apparently saw the success of USAR, and dropped the handful of races after 1996.
The Charlotte Motor Speedway had conducted 30 of the 42 Sportsman Division races. During the Charlotte races, at least 18 drivers, D’Eath, Gartner, Jr., Purcell, Ross, McEachern, Everette, Satterfield, Saverance, Dwight Cass, William Metzger, Ritchie Petty, Lee Tissot, Steve Allison, Mickey Hudspeth, Robert Wooten, Chuck Hebing, Mike Goudie, and Doug Gold, had gone to Cabarrus Memorial Hospital with some sort of injury or burn, as had two crewmen struck by crash debris in a crash in May 1994. Three more drivers, Gaines, Batson and Phillips, were dead. The only hospitalization required during a non-Charlotte race was Rounder Saverance at Pocono in 1991 due to carbon monoxide poisoning.
Graduates of the Sportsman Division include Trucks legends Dennis Setzer, Jack Sprague and Todd Bodine, 2002 Daytona 500 winner Ward Burton, Busch Series veteran Jason Keller, Trucks long runner Michael Dokken, ARCA winner and crew chief to Dale Sr. Kirk Shelmerdine, Dash Series champion Robert Huffman, and short track expert Robbie Faggart. All of these drivers had moved up by the 1992 season except for Shelmerdine, Dokken and Faggart. Despite this, most Sportsman drivers look back on the division fondly.
Faggart ran a few Busch races into the early 2000s. He attempted seven Cup races but never qualified. Faggart was racing in legend cars as of 2018.
The Sportsman Division did not crown champions in 1989, 1990, and 1991, and was more of an exhibition series. As mentioned, in 1992, Robbie Faggart was the champion. The 1993 series was won by David Smith in a close duel with Tim Bender. The series returned to being an exhibition series in 1994.
A later inquest found that the accident would have likely gone the same way if Jeff Gordon and Mark Martin found themselves in the same situation, as it was a fault with the car design which killed Phillips and only didn’t due to driver experience and training. As for Russell’s Oldsmobile, it was completely written off, and shipped up to Connecticut and destroyed in the LaJoie family scrapyard.
John Phillips left Phoenix Racing after 1996, and the family stayed off the race track afterwards, though they remained fans of the sport itself. Robert Phillips died in 2015, aged 80. Phoenix Racing, James Finch, and Mark Reno continued on in NASCAR, scoring one Cup win with Brad Keselowski at Talladega in 2009, until sponsorship woes and a changing environment caused Finch to sell the team in 2013. Finch’s company, Phoenix Construction, is still an occasional NASCAR sponsor.
Jennifer said to SCR that she usually attended Sportsman races that Russell was in, but for the first time she could not due to a doctor’s appointment. Russell’s fatal crash occurred a few minutes before she arrived at the Speedway. She has since remarried and started a family.
Steven Howard found success in other divisions, scoring the Greenville-Pickens track championship in 1996 and winning several races in the NASCAR All Pro Series, later called the Southeast Division. Despite this, according to friends, Howard never moved past Russell’s crash. Howard mostly retired from racing in 2005, though he continued to compete every once in a while. Steven Howard passed away on February 6th, 2011 of natural causes. He was 36, a day away from turning 37.
Howard Hughes Driver
In 1996, Dale Earnhardt was hooked into the outside wall at Talladega. The car hit the wall with such force that it overturned, and during its roll it was struck in the windshield. Despite a nearly head-on first hit and a second hit so hard that the windshield gave way, Earnhardt survived with broken bones. Due to both this and Russell’s accident, the Earnhardt Bar was introduced to act as an extra windshield support. It was upgraded after Ryan Newman’s crash at Talladega in 2009 and once again after Newman’s infamous crash at the end of the 2020 Daytona 500, so hopefully the combined Earnhardt and Newman Bars will prevent such an accident from ever happening again.
SOURCES:
‘Remembering Russell Phillips’ – Stock Car Racing Magazine, January 1996
‘Death At The Track’ – Charlotte Observer, November 11, 2001
‘Waltrip Brothers Special’ – June 6th, 2001 post to Google Groups by Erik Bondurant
‘DRIVER KILLED INSTANTLY IN GRIM CRASH’ – Greensboro News & Record, October 6, 1995
‘Steven Howard – Not Your Average All-American’ – Racing News, October 23, 1996
“Holt racing driver has two types of fun on track”, Pensacola News Journal, October 5, 1994
‘In Memory Of Robert Lee “Bob” Phillips Jr.’ – Obituary from Dignity Memorial
‘Concord Motor Speedway Big 10 Report’ – Sporttoday, October 11, 1995
“‘Gruesome’ wreck at Charlotte track kills driver” – The Gaston Gazette, October 7, 1995
Jay Howard Driver Development
Cliff Lemore, a family friend of the Phillips
J.B. Stewart, a family friend of the Howards
Robin Caldwell, Sportsman driver
Ronnie Sewell, Sportsman driver
Steven Knipe, Sportsman driver
Shari Minter, Sportsman driver
Morris Bice, Sportsman driver
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