zzdcar
Home
/
Reviews
/
Racing
/
Driver Dies In Sprint Car Crash At Florida Short Track
Driver Dies In Sprint Car Crash At Florida Short Track-May 2024
2024-02-19 EST 22:11:24

Two-time United States Auto Club Silver Crown champion David Steele died in a sprint-car crash on Saturday night while racing at Florida’s Desoto Speedway. The reports that Steele’s car went airborne in a wreck during the main event, and that medical personnel pronounced him dead on track.

According to the Herald, speeds were upward of 100 mph at the three-eighths-mile asphalt oval earlier in the day. Steele, 42, was racing in a Southern Sprint Car Shootout Series event that night in the No. 33 winged sprint car. The Herald reports that Steele started the main event toward the back of the field, making an early move to pass another driver when the two hooked wheels.

Steele’s sprint car hit an outside retaining wall in the first turn and spun across the track after the wreck, the Herald reports:

According to the source, his car was not hit by another vehicle after it struck the wall and the visible damage to the car was consistent with a vehicle hitting the outside wall flush on the left side.

According to multiple sources, the race was immediately red flagged and track emergency personnel were at the vehicle in seconds. According to a source affiliated with the track who was not authorized to speak on the record, the track has multiple fully-trained medics, EMTs and firefighters at the track for each race card. That was the case Saturday night as well.

Despite the rapid response, Steele was pronounced dead on the track. Track personnel, emergency personnel and local authorities called to the track after the incident were still on the track at the crash scene near midnight. Track personnel, race officials and other witnesses were waiting to be cleared to leave the facility.

The speedway released an about the wreck on Facebook late Saturday night:

Desoto Speedway owners and staff are saddened by tonights [sic] passing of David Steele in the Sprint car feature. Thoughts and prayers go out to his family and friends who were all in attendance, to see him try to win his 100th florida [sic] race.

According to , Steele was the USAC Silver Crown series champion in both 2004 and 2005. He also won 53 USAC national races during his career, and was the winner of the most recent Southern Sprint Car Shootout Series feature at 417 Southern Speedway in Florida on Feb. 25.

Over the past several years, sprint-car crashes have killed drivers like , , , and NASCAR’s .

Comments
Welcome to zzdcar comments! Please keep conversations courteous and on-topic. To fosterproductive and respectful conversations, you may see comments from our Community Managers.
Sign up to post
Sort by
Show More Comments
Racing
How To Crush A Record In An 11,000 Horsepower Top Fuel Dragster
How To Crush A Record In An 11,000 Horsepower Top Fuel Dragster
Last Friday, Leah Pritchett broke the Top Fuel national time record with a ludicrously quick 3.658-second pass at the NHRA Arizona Nationals, reaching a ridiculous 329.34 mph in that short time. Here’s everything she and her team had to remember to get out of the way to prepare for such...
May 22, 2026
Honda Is Going To Suck This Year
Honda Is Going To Suck This Year
The poor, long-suffering McLaren-Honda Formula One team got no reprieve from their continuing power unit nightmare during preseason testing this year. Their test sessions were shortened significantly by power unit problems, crushing our McLaren-Honda Senna flashback dreams once more. On the first day of testing, an oil systems issue forced...
May 22, 2026
Racing’s Gonna Suck This Year
Racing’s Gonna Suck This Year
Formula One’s preseason tests have proven the cars are faster, with Valtteri Bottas crushing Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya’s all-time track record . However, they’ve also proven some of our worst fears about the thing that makes racing actually fun to watch: overtaking. These new cars look cool, but they are definitely...
May 22, 2026
Lance Stroll Is Formula One's Newest Crash Test Missile
Lance Stroll Is Formula One's Newest Crash Test Missile
Did you miss the antics of ? Did the prospect of someone crashing early and often in Formula One warm the ice-cold depths of your tiny little heart? Congratulations! Now you can pick on one of F1's youngest faces, provided you don’t have any qualms about picking on someone who...
May 22, 2026
Austin Wants A Formula E Race In 2018 But Not On Its F1 Track
Austin Wants A Formula E Race In 2018 But Not On Its F1 Track
Five U.S. cities are on the short list for a 2018 Formula E race, including Los Angeles, Las Vegas and Austin, reports the . With electric race cars that are vastly quieter than the pit-o’-debauchery that is Sixth Street, the group pushing for the race date says they can act...
May 22, 2026
A Graphical Representation Of How Confused People Were During The Daytona 500
A Graphical Representation Of How Confused People Were During The Daytona 500
On Sunday, Jalopnik posted under the sanctioning body’s . The views on that post shot up and down in an almost unprecedented way during the race, plotting an astonishing graph of exactly when and how confused people were. Just a few years after introducing , NASCAR decided to give the...
May 22, 2026
Copyright 2023-2026 - www.zzdcar.com All Rights Reserved