Dirt track racing is dangerous for everyone. In April 2023, NASCAR star Alex Bowman flipped his sprint car at 34 Raceway. He broke his back, missed many big races, and had to stop dirt racing forever to save his NASCAR career. In 2016, racing legend Tony Stewart broke his back in an off-road crash. This bad break is called a “burst fracture.” He needed major surgery and missed months of racing.
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Now, a 16-year-old rising star is facing the same nightmare. Friday night at Attica Raceway Park in Ohio was supposed to be another learning night. Instead, it ended with an ambulance ride.
Aiden Price was having a great race. He said his car felt very fast, and he had run as high as third place earlier in the night. But as he drove into Turn 1, his right front tire broke. It either got cut or popped off the wheel. The car cartwheeled twice, then balanced on its nose in the air before slowly tipping over and coming down. Addressing that, Price wrote on X,
“I remember sitting there on my nose balancing in the air and just remember seeing the whole car slowly start to fall,” Price wrote in a public statement. “Think this isn’t gonna be good at all before I actually landed.”
Price is not a normal teenager. During the week, he drives a racing simulator for General Motors. He is very important to them. He tests cars for the Cadillac Formula 1 team, IndyCar, and sports car programs.
Right before the 2026 Miami Grand Prix, Price worked all night in the simulator to fix a car issue. Then, he flew straight to the race. But on weekends, he drives real dirt sprint cars in the No. 44 car for Farmer Racing. He does this to learn things a computer cannot teach him.
The first hospital called it a compressed fracture. Then came the MRI. Price had a T10 burst fracture, which is much worse. This is the same bad injury Tony Stewart had.
In a burst fracture, the spine bone shatters. The broken pieces get very close to the spinal cord. Price was lucky that his spinal cord was not hurt. He can still move his arms and legs. But the broken bone is a big worry. He had to wear a back brace just to travel home for surgery.
Because this injury is so bad, Price cannot race for the rest of the 2026 season. It usually takes an athlete three to six months to heal from a crash like this.
“No major issues with the spinal cord, but it is in their concern on the way it is broken,” he wrote.
This brings us back to Bowman. After he broke his back, he tried to make a comeback quickly. Too quickly, by his own admission. The back problems dragged on for three years and eventually triggered severe vertigo.
So, he eventually decided to stop dirt racing. His Cup Series career came first. GM will almost certainly make the same call for Price, and they will not need to think hard about it.
They have spent a lot of time and money training a 16-year-old to help their Formula 1 team. A giant company will not risk all that work on weekend dirt races.
Price ended his statement by thanking the Attica track workers, his crew, and the family who rode with him in the ambulance. He also mentioned he had the speed to win that night before everything went wrong. He probably did. That part just does not matter much right now.