Friends of a Cambridge legend in the snowmobile grass drag racing circuit are coming together to show their support after the 72-year-old was seriously injured in a crash in Woolwich township earlier this week.
Peter Brenner was testing one of his drag sleds at a farm north of the city on Sunday when he lost control and flipped the machine.
Brenner ended up in a Hamilton hospital with punctured lungs, 12 broken ribs and three cracked vertebrae according to his friend, Cambridge realtor Tony Schmidt.
“He has a long road to recovery ahead of him,” said Schmidt, who put together a GoFundMe page on Friday with a $5,000 goal to help with expenses.
Schmidt hasn’t raced for a number of years but is friends of Brenner and raced with him since the early ‘90s.
“He’s the kind of guy that would help anybody at the race track, like from here to Michigan to Quebec. He’s very well known in the racing community."
The 500 foot drag races take place on a grass surface from a clay or hard-packed starting line and run throughout the summer and fall.
Snowmobile Drag Racing Ontario has an event going in Merrickville on Sept. 25.
Schmidt said the grass drags started out as a way to test new machines and get snowmobile enthusiasts ready for the season before becoming a sport.
Brenner does most of the tuning on his sleds and was taking one of the sleds for a pass on Sunday when the accident happened.
“Things obviously happen pretty fast on something that’s built for acceleration,” Schmidt said.
“He’s on the mends,” he said of his friend. “He’s got a number of broken bones and had a couple of punctured lungs but they got to him quickly and got him down to Hamilton and they’ve already got him up walking around a bit, which is great.”
Schmidt said Brenner is 72, but “you would never know it.”
Most people probably thought it was “someone playing around in a field” when they read the original police report about the accident, he said.
“People didn’t even put it together it was Peter because it said he’s 72.”
Schmidt said he wanted to put the GoFundMe together knowing Brenner is retired and will likely face medical procedures and physiotherapy to regain his mobility. He’s unsure if Brenner has insurance to cover those expenses.
