Popular driver died in racing car he loved
‘Between Corner 1 and 2 he had a heart attack,’ Speedway boss says
Wesley Wallin died in the racing car he loved, and his former wife wants to mark a spot at Capital City Speedway in honour of happy times there.
Wallin, 57, suffered a heart attack while driving in the last race of the evening Wednesday night at the racetrack in Ashton. His car crashed afterwards, but track officials don’t believe this caused his death.
Racing was a family passion that dated back decades, Debra O’Toole said. “The passion for racing grew over the years we were together before the boys.
“When we first started dating we went to the track every race. We had our favourite spot in the stands. I’m going to go to the stands and I’m going to paint that spot his favourite colour, blue.”
“We’ve been either spectators, passionate fans, involved at the track somehow, for it’s got to be over 20 years.”
Their sons Jaime, 22, and Casey, 18, are also racers. Casey just started last year and was looking forward to racing against his father. He would have raced Wednesday night, but had to fix his car first, “so his Dad said, ‘Well, we’ll see the car out there next race.’”
Jamie meanwhile has shared the driving on his father’s car.
O’Toole explained the family’s fascination with racing: “It’s like anybody that has a passion for anything — for music, for art, for painting, for photography. It’s a passion.
“It’s a passion for feeling that power pushing you through the corners.
“It’s the family atmosphere. You
It’s the family atmosphere. You might be rivals out on the track but you’re not rivals in the pit.
might be rivals out on the track but you’re not rivals in the pit,” she said.
“Everybody knows everybody. I have heard (Thursday) from everybody — from oval racing to vintage drag racing to drifting clubs. Everybody knew Wes and the boys.”
Casey’s birthday and his father’s come close together in July, “and he and I for the last week had been planning the most amazing birthday party for the two of them, involving racing.”
On the night of the accident, “I was standing there, watching that race. I lost sight of the car, by the time I saw it again, he was already gone,” she said.
It was the opening night of the season.
Speedway president Todd Gow said witness accounts and video indicate Wallin collapsed at the wheel before going off the track around 10:45 p.m. The car left the track, crossed the infield and eventually hit a concrete wall on the far side.
“We watched the videos last night,” Gow said. “Everything we can tell is that in between Corner 1 and 2 he had a heart attack.”
Gow estimated the vehicle’s speed at 55 to 65 kilometres an hour, and said Wallin didn’t hit the wall hard enough to be hurt by it.
“They say that he was actually picking up speed as he was coming across the grass,” Gow said.
O’Toole said her former husband, with whom she was also a business partner, had double-bypass heart surgery roughly seven years ago but had been healthy since then.
“Our 22-year-old son’s last words to his dad were ‘Drive safe, Dad’,” she said.
She wrote in a Facebook post that her ex-husband “passed doing what he loved, with those he loved more than life itself.”
Just hours earlier, the family had been looking forward to the evening’s racing. O’Toole posted on Twitter in the afternoon:
In a little over six hours from now, the green flag will fly over #CapitalCitySpeedway in the west end of Ottawa, best kept secret in #Ottawa.
Police closed the course to investigate. Wallin was given two shocks from a defibrillator and was given continuous treatment en route to the hospital. He was found with no pulse and was not breathing.
Gow described Wallin as quiet, and “as shy as a church mouse.”
Racing gets in the blood, “like being addicted to crack,” he said. It’s a combination of the people, the speed the noise, and the chance to work on cars, he said.
Most of the drivers know each other well because they have raced each other for years, he added.
Police are investigating the incident.