16-year-old sprint car driver still hospitalized after Petaluma Speedway crash

Chelsea Blevins said she’s aware of the risks each time she climbs into her high-powered sprint car to take on a pack of hard-core racers speeding around an oval track in pursuit of victory.

Even after a bad crash at Petaluma Speedway left her with serious injuries Monday night, Blevins, 16, said she hopes one day to be a professional driver.

“I’m just really passionate about it,” she said by phone Wednesday from her bed at Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital. “I’m a third-generation racer. I have it in my blood.”

But it’s going to be a few months before she gets her foot on the gas again, according to her mom and manager, Lori Blevins.

With injuries that include a torn spleen and two broken ribs, and a car that needs significant repairs, the focus right now is getting settled back at home and making a full recovery, Lori Blevins said.

Like her daughter, she said she contemplates the dangers every time the teen straps into her car.

But even Lori Blevins seemed to take the crash in stride.

“She’s been more hurt doing cheerleading, to be honest with you,” including being dropped on her head, Lori Blevins said.

On Monday, Chelsea, a resident of Janesville in Lassen County, was on a straightaway at about 60 mph when her tire clipped another car and she flipped end-over-end and crashed into a fence, her parents said.

“I can’t really remember what happened, because I think I blanked out,” she said Wednesday. “All I remember is just waking up to a bunch of people putting my car right side up.”

Emergency personnel had to cut part of her mangled car away to get her out, and the medics were really nice, she said. She remembers, too, that lots of racers rushed out to offer support.

“I’ve flipped before, so I’m not really scared or anything, but I was just in a lot of pain,” she said.

The teen had internal bleeding and was hospitalized in intensive care overnight, though her bleeding had been stabilized by Wednesday, Lori Blevins said.

Chelsea has been racing since she was 9 years old, though in smaller, less powerful vehicles.

Her father, Greg Blevins, raced sprint cars before her, as did her grandfather.

She already had traveled extensively around the West to race Outlaw Karts when, as a high school sophomore, she came of age to compete in sanctioned sprint car races, her mother said.

She was racing in Petaluma as part of the Sprint Car Challenge Tour, which started April 1 in Antioch and passed through Petaluma twice, once in late April and the second time last weekend.

Blevins is the only girl this year on the tour, in which more than 100 drivers are competing to accumulate the most overall points. She faces maybe 50 drivers in each race and is still “learning how to keep up with the big boys,” her mother said.

“She’s racing with the best of the best of the best,” Lori Blevins said.

With half the tour still to go, Chelsea was in 35th place as of June 24, according to the tour website.

To lose out on all or most of the rest of the tour “is a devastating thing to have happen,” Lori Blevins said.

The region’s race fans are familiar with the hazards of sprint racing.

A Santa Rosa eighth-grader, Marcus Johnson, and a man who was walking with him through the pit area at a Marysville track suffered fatal injuries in March 2013, when they were struck by a sprint car driven by Johnson’s cousin, Chase Johnson, of Penngrove. Chase Johnson, who still races, apparently had a faulty steering wheel that came loose and caused his car to leave the track at about 90 mph. It traveled 200 feet into the pit area.

Six months earlier, an up-and-coming driver competing in Calistoga crashed and died. Redding resident Tyler Wolfe was 20.

Chelsea Blevins said she knows the possibility of a crash is ever-present but she’s unwilling to let that stop her.

“Like any sport, you’re risking yourself, and you’re getting in the car and you know you’re risking your life,” she said. “But you do it because it’s your passion and you can’t just not do it because of fear.”

You can reach Staff Writer Mary Callahan at 707-521-5249 or mary.callahan@pressdemocrat.com.