Woodward was closed off and turned into a legal, 1\/8-mile drag strip<\/a>\u00a0next to M1 Concourse Car Club north of St. Joseph Mercy\u00a0Hospital.<\/p>\nRawlings, an experienced drag racer, thrilled the packed grandstands on Woodward with a long,\u00a0tire-burning display out of the box, only to\u00a0have his 707-horse steed snap left and into the wall.\u00a0Pritchett continued without incident to win the heat.<\/p>\n
Rawlings took it in stride, flashing a smile, as he limped back to the paddock in his bruised Dodge.<\/p>\n
Roadkill Nights is full of experienced, invitation-only racers and this year’s event had been incident-free until the Gas Monkey’s\u00a0run.<\/p>\n
Rawlings posted a statement later on social media: \u201cY\u2019all asked for it, here\u2019s me going into the wall at Roadkill Nights against Leah Pritchett. What a day! Looks like I\u2019m gonna need some more practice, sorry Dodge.\u201d<\/p>\n
Saturday marked\u00a0the third year that Dodge, Motor Trend, and M1 have teamed up for the\u00a0Roadkill spectacle, which kicks off Dream\u00a0 Cruise week.<\/p>\n
Rawlings is a Dodge Performance spokesman and he was trailed by fans at the Roadkill event all day. He happily took interviews and posed for selfies and photos.<\/p>\n
On this writer’s 910 AM “Car Radio” show from M1 Concourse earlier in the day, he said he was looking forward to the celebrity shootout. “I wish they did this in Dallas,” said the 49-year old of his home town. “But the weather up here is so much better this time of year. This is where you want to be.”<\/p>\n
Rawlings says he owns every devilish model of Dodge’s SRT performance portfolio including the Hellcat, 797-horse Hellcat Redeye, and 840-horsepower Demon.<\/p>\n
The car he crashed, however, was one of four Hellcats – bearing #SaveYourSlips stickers on their\u00a0front bumpers –\u00a0that Dodge brought to Roadkill Nights for the late afternoon celebrity shootout. Celebrities included Pritchett, “Roadkill” hosts Mike Finnegan and David Freiburger – and the ultimate winner, pro wrestler Goldberg.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Pontiac\u00a0\u2014 Roadkill Nights drag racing competition was full of thrills Saturday, but it was\u00a0TV personality Richard Rawlings’ spill that will be most remembered. The Gas Monkey Garage owner and star of\u00a0Discovery’s “Fast N’\u00a0Loud” reality show peeled a Dodge Challenger SRT Hellcat into the Jersey barrier on Woodward here as he battled NHRA Top Fuel superstar\u00a0Leah\u00a0Pritchett […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22711"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22711"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22711\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22711"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22711"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22711"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Rawlings\"](\"https:\/\/www.gannett-cdn.com\/presto\/2018\/08\/12\/PDTN\/916b6efe-5acb-4d53-b872-f31db86c0580-rawlings.jpg?crop=630,473,x236,y40&width=534&height=401&fit=bounds\")
<\/p>\n