Living the dream
When he is not behind the wheel, Quesnel’s Trevor Adelman sings in a country rock band
Alyn Edwards profiles Quesnel’s Trevor Adelman, a race car driver who doesn’t let his disability slow him down.
Trevor Adelman had a new race car built at Harding Motorsports in Langley for this year’s season. This is the 26- year- old’s fourth race car, and was built with a modified door that hinges down so he can get in and out of the driver’s seat. In addition, the race car is equipped with hand controls so Adelman can run the car on asphalt with 30 or so other race cars at up to 140 m. p. h. ( 225 km/ h) depending on the track. He goes to the race track in a wheelchair.
Adelman says he’s living the dream, working with his closest childhood friends from Quesnel building the race car in the shop owned by NASCAR champion Pete Harding that is operated by his son Shane, also a NASCAR champion and race car builder.
The car was completed in time for Adelman to start his fourth racing season in the ARCA OK Tire Sportsman Series. He’ll be racing tomorrow in Williams Lake.
He grew up helping his father Dennis work on race cars and started his own driving career at the age of 16 at Quesnel’s Gold Pan Speedway. He had been racing for three years when a car accident in 2004 broke his back and rendered him a paraplegic at the age of 19. He was a passenger in a car full of teenagers returning from a camping trip when the driver lost control. The car rolled into a ditch and Adelman was thrown from the car.
After the accident that paralyzed him from the waist down, he was sent to the G. F. Strong Rehabilitation Centre in Vancouver. He couldn’t wait to get back behind the wheel. So, with the help of his family, he purchased a supercharged 2001 Pontiac GTP and equipped it with hand controls so he could check himself out of the centre every night to go driving.
Adelman talks about the amazing community support when he returned home to Quesnel.
“My friends told me, if I could drive a car, I could go racing,” he says. “Then they built me a race car.”
The 1982 Monte Carlo purchased locally had already been a race car. Thus, NFA ( No Feet Adelman) Racing was born. The crew consists of crew chief Warren Dagenais, Shaun Quechuck and Justin Grouette ( setup), James Mckelvie ( fabrication) and Jason Mcandrews ( mechanical).
They welded in a roll bar with a hinged access door and headed to Gold Pan Speedway for the 2005 season opener. But the major obstacles were not to be on the track. Other drivers and track operators didn’t think it was a good idea to have a paraplegic racing.
“They just hadn’t seen that before,” Adelman recalls. “But we showed up and went racing.”
In the first lap of his second race, his car got squeezed between two others, hit the wall and rolled upside down. “You could have heard a pin drop at the track,” he says. “I was all right. But the car was a write off.”
Crew chief Dagenais responded by saying: “I guess we’re building you a new car.”
Back competing in 2007, Adelman was able to put up some great finishes on the northern tracks in Quesnel, Williams Lake and Prince George. He led the points at his home track for the entire 2008 season. But his car developed mechanical problems in the last race of the year and he finished fifth overall.
For 2009, he took a huge step up with a new car purchased in Peachland to compete in the ARCA OK Tire Sportsmen’s Series with late- model stock cars weighing 3,100 pounds ( 1,406 kg) that go up to 225 km/ h.
The B. C. race tour took him to Vernon, Agassiz and north central tracks with a race car that could compete anywhere in North America. He had a few minor sponsors from Quesnel. But travel costs for a crew of five and the need to buy four new tires for every race ate up the money and limited the team from entering more than five races.
“It costs about $ 3,000 a weekend,” Adelman estimates.
He was voted the most improved driver for the 2010 season and finished in the top 10 of 25 cars for the 2011 ARCA Race Series. Along the way he met Shane Harding.
“I was amazed at what these guys do,” Harding says. “They have to work twice as hard as everyone else and still they are real competitors.”
This spring, a new race car was built from scratch at the Harding Motorsports shop in Langley. Adelman and his crew stayed on site in a rented motor home while working with Harding to put the car together with a frame shipped from Port City Racing in Michigan. The car has been fitted with simple hand controls: pull for gas and push for brake. The budget for this year’s racing is $ 80,000, including the cost of the new car.
“We have raised about half through sponsorships and the sale of merchandise,” Adelman notes. “We still need more sponsorship help to keep racing.”
Big sponsors this year include Babcon Industries and Brody Lawrence Contracting, K2 Courier Services, Huska Construction, all of Quesnel, with Northern Energy Constructors of Prince George just signing on. Adelman’s Vancouver personal injury lawyer, David Doig, is also a sponsor.
Pete Harding donated space in his shop to build the new race car and Shane Harding helped build the car at cost with no profit.
“I really admire what this crew does,” he says.
Adelman will compete on B. C. tracks this summer and hopes to enter the Fall Classic Race in Las Vegas.
“My friends and family have been amazing,” he says with special gratitude to his parents, sisters and grandparents on both sides of the family. “We have tons of fans and are a favourite at every track”
He and his crew plan to trailer the new race car to the G. F. Strong Rehabilitation Centre in August “to show people that, despite what happens, you can make your life worthwhile.”
In his spare time, Adelman sings in the country rock band Rockin’ Chair and has opened for country stars Travis Tritt and Aaron Pritchett.
“I wouldn’t trade where anything for where I am at today,” he says. “I’m truly living the dream.”
The best may be yet to come.