Morgan Turpen competed in six sprint car races before reaching what many would consider a crossroads.
During a race at Riverside International Speedway in West Memphis, Arkansas, in 2009, Turpen wrecked and was hospitalized for 18 days after busting a carotid artery in her neck. She was only 16.
She’d started racing go-karts when she was 11 years old after watching her brother, Colt, race them several years prior. Racing was in her blood. She didn’t want to do anything else, so she returned to her car.
The memory loss, particularly of events years before the wreck, didn’t faze her; the doctors had warned her of it.
“It’s just one of those things … if I couldn’t race, what would I do?” Turpen said. “It’s like drugs — you can’t get off it.”
Her mother, Linda Richey, was nervous and prayed during every race before the accident. Surprisingly, Richey didn’t hold her daughter back.
“She wants me to be happy,” Turpen said, “And she knows that for me, it’s racing.”
That support has helped Turpen, 22, become the top-ranked female sprint car driver in the nation this season. She won the United Sprint Car Series Rookie of the Year in 2010 and won the 2014 Road to Atlanta Asphalt Championship. She has won six USCS races in her career.
She hopes to add to that win total tonight at Magnolia Motor Speedway during “Fast Friday,” presented by Carl Hogan Toyota. The event is part of USCS Sprint Speedweek. Racing, which includes weekly series races in Super Late Models, Limited Late Models, and Factory Stocks, begins at 7:30 p.m.
While Turpen, a native of Cordova, Tennessee, has recovered from the wreck, it changed her approach on the track. Thought not completely apprehensive, it has forced her to become smarter.
“Most of the time I feel confident I won’t do something stupid,” she said. “I don’t worry or think about it that much. That was my first year racing, so I didn’t know the drivers around me. With time and experience, you get to know how everyone else drives. And you try not to put yourself in a situation where it can go either way.”
Turpen began her sprint car career in 305 wingless cars, which have smaller engines before moving up to winged sprint cars. Her mentor and car owner along the way has been sprint car driver and 11-time USCS champion, Terry Gray.
“He started helping me when I first got into it,” Turpen said. “Now I race for him. He’s been doing everything he can. He’s helped a few other guys in racing, and it hasn’t worked out. I was eager to learn, though, and now we’re partners. He’s won 300 some odd races at a hundred race tracks. He’s the perfect person to have as a mentor.”
Turpen’s success has steered her ambition to higher classes of racing. Like many young drivers, her dream is to make it to NASCAR. In the meantime, she’s shooting for the K&N Series, a developmental series of NASCAR.
But there’s always the classroom whenever she decides to leave the track.
Turpen completed her undergraduate degree in education at Memphis this spring. She received her degree earlier this month.
“It wasn’t too difficult because I was able to do a lot of classes online,” Turpen said. “I wasn’t big on the ‘college life,’ so it didn’t bother me not being on campus and experiencing all of that.
“I’d rather be racing.”
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