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GOODY'S DASH RACER RAY PAPROTA DRIVING AGAINST THE ODDS
Seventeen years ago, Ray Paprota was paralyzed from the waist down in an automobile accident. And in a way, that was the day his life began.
Since losing the use of both legs, Paprota has counseled other disabled people, encouraging them to continue to live - not just exist. He has traveled the world playing wheelchair basketball. And next week, Paprota will try to realize another dream.
This weekend, Paprota, 38, will attempt to become the first wheelchair-bound driver to make a NASCAR race in Friday's Georgia-Pacific 150 Goody's Dash race on the quarter-mile Thunder Ring.
"This will be the realization of a lot of dreaming for us," Paprota said. "I hope I can make the race and make everyone proud."
Paprota has already made a lot of people proud. Since his injury 17 years ago, he has experienced more life than most people without a disability.
It was during rehabilitation that Paprota was introduced to wheelchair basketball by another wheelchair-bound patient. Paprota threw himself into the activity, becoming one of the best wheelchair-bound athletes in the country. He was recruited in 1992 by the Lakeshore Foundation in Birmingham and spent the next few years training for the 1996 Paralympic Games in Atlanta. Two weeks before the final cut, Paprota tore a rotator cuff in his shoulder.
Instead of mourning his bad luck, Paprota busied himself helping out a friend, who was racing Legends cars. After a few months of working on the car, Paprota figured if he was going to be at the track every weekend, he might as well try to drive.
He refitted a Legends car so that he could drive it completely with his hands, then competed for the next five years on short tracks around the south, including Atlanta Motor Speedway's Thunder Ring.
Paprota's Legends racing career caught the attention of legendary NASCAR driver Bobby Allison, who lives nearby.
"Bobby Allison saw me race Legends cars and saw that I was real competitive," Paprota said. "He asked if I had an interest in competing at a higher level. We tried to step up and run in the ARCA series, but the controls of a Legends car are completely different, and we weren't ready to make that leap. We tried, but we never got comfortable with it. So we tabled that for a bit and tried to reengineer things."
That's when Paprota hooked up with Danny Bagwell, another Alabama resident. Bagwell had a Craftsman Truck that he tried to outfit for Paprota, but NASCAR nixed that idea because of Paprota's relative inexperience on bigger tracks.
Instead, Bagwell - a 10-year veteran of the Goody's Dash Series - offered to help build a car for Paprota. The two have worked out a system of modifications, which have been adjusted through months of trial and error. They include a CO2 bottle that runs all of the hand controls, a cable throttle that functions as a motorcycle linkage and a clutch system that is located on the shifter.
"I've been in a wheelchair 17 years," Paprota said "It teaches you to be an engineer in some aspects. Everything I do is all leverage and angles. The hardest thing is to communicate what I have in my head."
Finally the team has constructed a working model, which Paprota tested for the first time last month at a track in Pennsylvania. After a few laps of real on-track experience, Paprota had a host of changes to make in order to make the car comfortable enough to drive.
The crew - made up of a few volunteers, Paprota and Bagwell - went to work, then brought their final creation to Atlanta for an open test. Paprota logged more laps than he ever had before, suggested a few more modifications, and prepared himself to race.
"We've been working on this car for two years, and this is the first time we've really had any significant track time," Bagwell said during the Atlanta test. "And look at how happy he is. I'm just trying to help Ray make his dream come true. He's an inspiration to us all."
Paprota doesn't see it that way. Life just handed him a different deck of cards to play with. How he played those cards was his choice.
"It sounds very clichéd, but I was a week shy of my 22nd birthday when I was injured, and I don't think there's a thing I would change since then," Paprota said. "Disabilities are a magnifying glass. I wouldn't be as fulfilled as I am right now if I weren't injured. There are days when I don't want to get out of bed, I'm so sore. But I have seen people so much more disabled than me."


bron: www.atlatamotorspeedway.com