Bob Gardner and Darryn Klein have both shared their perspectives after Gardner flipped Klein over after he fenced Gardner at Farmer City during the first heat night of the race with the MARS Championship.
As seen on FloRacing, after four attempts to get the race started, it appeared the fifth time was going to be the charm as the entire field made it out of turns 1 and 2. However, Klein threw a giant bomb in three and four. Gardner did not let up and got underneath Klein’s rear end as he continued to slide up the track. The contact shoved Gardner into the outside wall. As he came off the wall he appeared to try to ensure that Klein would get spun along with him, but only nicked him and instead plowed into the side of Dylan Thornton. Klein and the rest of the field continued to race as it stayed green.
However, after smashing into Thornton, Gardner drove through the infield and performed a U-turn to face the oncoming field head-on. Gardner made a move to go after Klein, but he was able to avoid it. Gardner then drove back into the infield and chased Klein through turns 3 and 4. He then slightly doored Klein in turn 4. As Klein sped up to get around, Gardner hit him in the door and flipped him upside down. He was then immediately disqualified with the tower stating, “4G, you are done. You are done for the night, 4G.”
💥 Some contact and extracurriculars during the @MARSDirtRacing heat races at @FarmerCityRacin.#MARSLateModels pic.twitter.com/DFj7OXRDx7
— FloRacing (@FloRacing) July 19, 2025
Following the wreck, Bob Gardner reacted by sharing a photoshopped mugshot of himself noting that his crime was “flipping opponent under caution.” He tagged Tyler Erb and said, “And you thought cussing was bad.”
Klein shared his thoughts on Facebook stating, “And as far as the s**t on track this is my view I threw the slider cause of the way the start of the race took place four times he gave me 0 room 4 separate times literally makes me start the race rf on the curb if he give me no room why do I respect him and give him all the room? I raced him exactly how he’s consistently raced me.. and I’ll continue to try to race that way…”
In a video posted to his YouTube channel earlier today, Gardner shared his thoughts, but first provided a disclaimer saying, “This isn’t intended to justify anything I did or persuade someone way or another. Just for my own good, I wanted to speak for myself.”
He then apologized to Thornton saying, “First of all, I wanted to apologize to Dylan Thornton. [He] had nothing to do with this. And, honestly, probably got the worst of it. So to Dylan and his team, they work just as hard as any of us do, truly apologize to you guys.”
Next, Gardner stated, “What I did was uncalled for, was wrong, was out of my character. But I did it and I’ll suffer the consequences for that whatever that may be. That wasn’t my intention. In the heat of the moment I wanted to flatten Darryn’s left rear tire. So, in my mind, he put me out of contention for not only that heat, but for the rest of the night for a possible win. And, in my mind, he wasn’t going to finish that heat race. I just wanted to flatten his left rear tire so he couldn’t finish the heat race. Give him a little bit of payback. Whether anybody thinks that’s right or wrong, that was my intention. Obviously, it didn’t go that way and went way wrong from that point on. There’s tons of factors in why it went wrong. I did make contact with him again. Should have never done that. That’s on me and I’ll take responsibility for it.”
Gardner then addressed Klein’s claims squeezing him on the restarts, “In my mind, I didn’t do anything wrong, anything that I’ve not done on every restart I’ve ever done.” As for the slider itself, Gardner said, “If you haven’t been in the seat, you know you have a split second to react. And obviously, I feel like it it probably could have went a couple different ways. It didn’t. I had a split second to either think that he was going to give me a lane around the top or turn down. Obviously, hindsight, I made the wrong judgement there.”
After claiming that Klein ran over his right front tire on the warm up laps before the heat race started, he then recapped the heat race, “We had four restarts for God knows what reasons. I won every single restart fair and square. Came off of two, went into three in the lead all four times and the 10 car didn’t even give us a chance to race. First lap, didn’t even cross the green lap. He runs in there wide ass open and runs over our nose. So takes us out of all contention. So, yeah, I was heated. As soon as that happened the accident put Dylan and I into the infield. … I would have thought that we would have had a yellow, but I guess because of how we got shoved down into the infield there wasn’t any caution on the racetrack itself. So they didn’t throw the yellow for whatever reason. I pull out on the track. Yes, going the wrong way. Again, another thing I did wrong. I understand that. But I wasn’t driving backwards down the front stretch under live condition like I’ve heard. I have it in my headset as soon as I turn on to the racetrack to draw caution, the caution was waved as they were on the back stretch.”
Gardner would conclude by reiterating he takes full responsibility and understands what he did was wrong and that he’s sorry to Dylan Thornton.
Of note, fellow super late model competitor, Brant Larson stated, “There’s a lot of drivers who the 10 car pulled a dirty slider on that enjoyed seeing this.”
Myles Moos suggested Gardner had time to lift.
Have you watched the in car video? Bob had 3 seconds to lift and never did. Unfortunately “sliders” have become normal whether we like them or not. But using your car like that is uncalled for.
— Myles Moos (@MylesMoos) July 19, 2025
What do you make of Gardner and Klein’s responses?
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