Race fans are a special breed. They parade through the gates of their local race track each week ready to experience the thrill of watching their favorite racers take the checkered flag. Its great fun for the family and draws a devout crowd.
But while racing the main attraction, racetrack promoters will quickly tell you that other kinds of entertainment is important to keep local interest high. Along hosting a competitive field of racers my paying out a decent prize to the winner, promoters use fireworks shows, T-shirt give-a-ways and other "stunts" to fill the stands with enthusiastic fans.
Enter the stunt show.
James August Smith is a professional stunt man from Lyle, Washington. The father of three, Smith has many of the same financial demands of most average dads but goes about supporting his family in very different ways. His work in movies is legendary, those big ticket roles paying well. But between those bigger paydays, Smith takes on smaller stunt show work such as this event at Dillon Motor Speedway, just to keep the family fed. It’s far from average dad employment.
Along with his more traditional vehicular stunt work like ramp-to-ramp jumps and precision driving, James (Jamie) Smith's specialty is 'skiing" vehicles - driving a specially-prepared cars and trucks that has been tilted up on two tires by a home built ramp. While old timers will remember those traveling Joey Chitwood stunt shows of old, Smith has taken "skiiing" and stunt driving to a new level.
Trained by the legendary Donald Frank "Buzz" Bundy, who was a regular in James Bond films and ABC's Wide World of Sports, Smith has made "skiing" his signature stunt, most notably appearing as the driver of the yellow "Bumble Bee" Camaro in the movie Transformers. Smith also builds and drives stunt cars for the annual Dukes fest in North Carolina and has 23 IMDB-certified movie stunt appearances to his credit. In fact today, if you see a vehicle driving "skiing" in a movie or on TV, there is a 70% chance that Smith is at the controls.
So when the promoters at Dillon Motor Speedway were looking for a cool attraction to draw an even bigger race crowd, Smith was called upon to do what he does best - something crazy. To increase the degree of difficult and add a patriotic touch, while Smith's Mustang is poised on two wheels, his buddy climbs on the back of the car and waves an American flag.
As an added touch for the Dillon Motorsports crowd, Smith also completed a pipe ramp jump as part of his evening's excitement- a stunt performed with no receiving ramp so the car lands hard on the Speedway tarmac. In this case, no good deed goes unpunished, as Smith's resulting concussion would verify.
This amazing video was created by Jason Lewis and posted on his YouTube site: AutoEdits. Lewis is a professional videographer and avid truck builder/enthusiast with an amazing portfolio of content. Along with this stunt show video, Lewis captured a lot more of Smith's antics available on his YouTube channel. Subscriptions to his channel will reward the viewer with hours of cool car/truck entertainment.
Video Creator - Jason Lewis
