Blind man drives laps at Charlotte Motor Speedway
Ronnie Presnell, 62, took a drive around Charlotte Motor Speedway in his restored 1968 Chevy Camaro on Thursday with the help of Kenny Wallace.
Eh, no big deal, right? Wrong. Presnell is blind.
Presnell lost his vision after a car accident in 1998, and when he got home from spending six weeks in a coma at the hospital, he went to work restoring the Camaro.
Before the accident, Presnell raced on dirt tracks around the Charlotte area and built and tuned his own equipment. But he admitted that the track was unlike anything he had ever driven before:
"That sure felt different than driving a car on a dirt track," Presnell said immediately after emerging from his Camaro. "It was awesome. I always wondered what it would be like to ride on the banking like that. It was more extreme than I thought it would be."
While Presnell only got his Camaro up to 20-25 mph with Wallace in the passenger seat telling him when to turn, he later got to experience the thrill of driving full speed around CMS, riding shotgun around Charlotte Motor Speedway while Wallace drove.
Pretty cool, huh?
