Bicknell Makes 2026 Chassis Changes With A Focus On Safety

– Stewart Friesen’s Crash Was A Wake-Up Call To Everyone In The Industry –
Bicknell Makes 2026 Chassis Changes With A Focus On Safety

By LEN SAMMONS
Bicknell Racing Products, the dominant force in dirt Modified chassis construction with roughly 98% of the market share, has introduced key design changes for the 2026 season. The decision stems from the company’s commitment to its customers – whom they consider family – and was prompted by a frightening incident involving driver Stewart Friesen and a multi-car crash earlier in the season that led Bicknell engineers to explore ways to further enhance driver safety.
“Everybody is my kid when they sit in one of our cars. I think of them all as family. I didn’t look at that crash any different because it was Stewart Friesen. It could have been any kid starting out,” said Bob Slack, who became a partner in Bicknell in 2007 with a focus on operation of the Machine Shop Division of BRP.
“If there is something to learn, we have to learn it. You hate you have to learn it this way, but anyone in NASCAR, IndyCar or any auto maker in the world has always learned something from something they never thought would happen,” said Slack, who works first hand with the latest in CNC Machinery to produce many new products and has redesigned existing components.
For many years, the Northeast dirt Modified world was regarded as a safe-haven for drivers compared to open-cockpit divisions. Yes, there were concussions now and then, the occasional back injury, and the usual bruises and bumps, but serious trauma was rare. Parents, spouses, and families could watch with a measure of comfort.
That sense of security vanished on Monday night, July 28, 2026, when one of the sport’s best and most beloved drivers, Stewart Friesen, was badly injured in a violent crash at Autodrome Drummond in Quebec, Canada.
From tragedy often comes progress. Friesen’s crash sparked renewed urgency around safety in dirt Modified racing, mirroring strides made in Sprint Car safety in recent years.
Earlier in the year at another Super DIRTcar Series event, this one at Selinsgrove Speedway in Pennsylvania, a restart on Wednesday, June 4th triggered a massive 13-car crash on the frontstretch. Thankful, all drivers walked away without serious injuries, but several cars were demolished and it put a scare into the sport.
The moment both of those crashes were witnessed, Slack and Randy Williamson – another key partner with Pete  Bicknell – joined members of their staff in a meeting to see if safety improvements were needed. Before the season ended, a 2026 chassis hit the speedway that incorporated those efforts.
Those at the track or watching from home live on DIRTvision were stunned as Friesen’s car slid off the backstretch berm, struck the blunt edge of a concrete block, flipped back onto the racing surface, and was hit by two cars before coming to a stop.
Thankfully, the car came to a rest right-side up. Fortunately, the rear clip, which was on fire, separated from the chassis, preventing flames from reaching him as he was trapped inside. The DIRTvision director wisely stopped showing the accident scene, but the silence did little to ease viewers’ fears.
“I’m sitting there watching and didn’t realize I had my knuckle in my mouth and had bitten down on my hand,” said Slack.
“I didn’t even realize I was doing it. I had just froze up. All I could say was ‘oh my god.’ Then I realized I had bitten so hard it hurt. Told my wife I’ve always been proud to have built race cars for a living, but that night I wished I had made baskets for a living. I felt like I was going to throw up.”
A prepared and highly trained DIRTcar safety team, working with track personnel, were able to take their time to extract Friesen safely, avoiding further injury. The car was cut apart to get Friesen out of the chassis while still in his racing seat. Given room outside the cage, they were then able to get him on a stretcher.
Friesen was transported in considerable pain to a local hospital, then transferred to a major trauma center, and later moved across the border to Albany, N.Y., where a specialist performed an extensive six-hour surgery to reconstruct his hip and right leg.
Bicknell built the chassis used by Friesen and the majority of the other dirt Modifieds in the field that night. Between 250–300 cars are built every year.
“I guess we’re learning to expect the unexpected. There is no way we can simulate everything that is going to happen in an accident,” said Slack.
“But almost every tube and gusset on our race cars and everyone else’s has really come from something you saw in the past that you never expected to happen.”
Slack’s son Dalton was not competing at the event, but Williamson’s son Mat was, adding emotional weight to the moment. In Slack and Williamson’s eyes, every Bicknell customer is part of a family and one of them was badly injured. Randy admitted he also felt like he got sick watching what happened.
A Company That Cares
Confronts Its Darkest Day
The morning after Friesen’s crash, Slack and Williamson gathered Bicknell’s full workforce for a somber meeting. Williamson described it as one of the darkest days in the company’s history. Their staff takes great pride in building not only the fastest cars in the sport, but the safest.
“We met on Tuesday morning and everyone in that chassis shop was so concerned. So we all put our heads together,” said Slack.
“I had gotten some pictures of the car on Monday night from one of the guys on the crew. I wanted to see what was going on. I wanted to start thinking about it right then and there. Me, Randy and the guys went over a bunch of stuff.”
From that meeting came a plan. When the 2026 Bicknell chassis was released in October, it featured multiple safety-driven upgrades, reflecting lessons learned from a frightening accident the sport will not soon forget.
“By ten o’clock on Tuesday morning we started building to see what we had. We were trying to move as quick as we could to come up with something to make it better,” said Slack.
“We don’t have computer programs that simulate crash testing. We can put certain forces into certain directions; there probably is million-dollar software in IndyCar or NASCAR that can do more, but not on our level.”
After the crash scene was cleared and crew chief Tommy Conroy accompanied Friesen to the hospital, the race resumed. Drivers such as Alex Yankowski, who sees Friesen as his mentor, were visibly shaken but returned to competition to finish the program.
With limited team personnel on site, Jay Castimore stayed behind to gather what remained of the destroyed car. Other teams assisted in loading the wreckage.
Slack was already thinking about safety. He immediately texted Castimore asking him to keep the car intact and save every broken component.
“I have talked to Stewie and his crew guys a lot since this incident,” said Slack.
“Just like Stewie said (in a previous AARN article) there was nothing that we could have built that would have withstood what that car took. It hit the butt end of the wall at around 100 mph.”
Shortly after the hauler arrived back at Friesen’s Sprakers, N.Y. shop, Slack personally made a four-hour drive there to inspect the damage.
“It happened on a Monday night. I was at his shop on Thursday morning. I wanted to see it as soon as I could,” said Slack.
“When I looked at the car I was amazed at how much destruction was on it. But it wasn’t a manufacturer-specific thing. I’m not ashamed with anything I saw; not a single weld broke, but it did shear a lot of tubing from the absolute force of a race car hitting a concrete wall like it did.”
The fact that the car was split into two pieces during the crash might have been lifesaving for Friesen.
“Part of what I saw was really good. The fuel cell and rear clip got ripped off the car which in my mind was the best thing that happened for him because it was on fire,” said Slack.
“It wasn’t on the car; it was down the race track sitting there on fire instead of being hooked to where the driver was.”
Slack was also able to analyze what had happened by reviewing the video footage of the crash over and over.
“I got all the slow-motion video from DIRTvision. They sent it to me so I could dissect it the best that I could. It was very helpful in some parts, but a couple of main points you couldn’t see exactly what happened. But it was very usable and they were so helpful getting it to us so quickly,” said Slack.
“It was the perfect storm. He hit the concrete block, when he flipped on top of the wall he hit in the exact same spot. It was like chopping your leg off with an axe and hitting the same wound again. It was brutal.”
Friesen’s ride wasn’t over; when momentum sent him back onto the speedway, he was hit hard by a car driven by Mario Clair, who reportedly suffered a concussion.
“I have pictures of the one car (Clair) that hit him when he was upside down. He took a pretty good wrap and it wrecked the frame, but it didn’t shear off the roll cage like some people have said,” explained Slack.
“It took a big hit on the front roll cage bar and bent it, a good wrap on the right front because the frame was twisted like he hit a wall. Couldn’t tell what he did because that was out of the frame of view.”
Slack allowed photographer Alex Bruce to come to Bicknell’s manufacturing location in St. Catharines where he pointed out the changes made to the 2026 chassis. From those photos, Slack personally wrote the captions and further explained what was done.
Building Stronger,
Learning Hard Lessons
“We added an extra bar up inside of the area where the main seat belt bar comes down and extends to the top of the roll cage. The bar is only ten inches long, but it’s a heavy-wall bar,” said Slack.
“In that situation I’m not saying it would stop what happened again, but it might not be able to shear that bar off. It might bend it or shear part of it off, but I think it would stay intact better.”
Slack said with all the changes made only about five to seven pounds are added to the car.
“We also added a one-inch bar across the front of the seat mount so that in a side impact like Stew had it would help keep the frame rails at the seat mounts separated instead of being allowed to crush in,” said Slack.
The DIRTcar rule book is the standard used in the Northeast to govern the specs on a dirt Modified. Bicknell has gone beyond the minimum required.
“We increased the thickness of the elbow bars you’ll see just above the wing that bend in around the driver. The down post by the driver’s leg has also been made thicker than required,” said Slack.
“We’ve now gone above the required thickness of the sanctioning bodies. Everything we have is above their standards. I won’t mess around with safety. I have too many families in our business to protect, too many families in racing to protect to mess around.”
Slack designed and built an impact-absorbing nerf bar mount.
“Our nerf bar mount comes directly in line with the seat mounts on our cars because there is nowhere else for them to go,” said Slack.
“The energy that can come in there now goes into a steel ring with a rubber inside that will help absorb some impact.”
The driver of a Northeast dirt Modified is seated in the middle of the car with the driveline running under him making other changes difficult.
“With our cars, every place we would like to put another bar there is a seat in the way, transmission, drive shaft, torque arms and the driver is in the way,” said Slack.
“We suffer from many of the same things that Sprint car builders do. The driver and the main drive lines run in the center of the race car and those are the places you wish you could beef up, but you can only do so much.”
Slack was mindful that others in the sport must also look in the mirror, that includes the race tracks where events are held.
“As much as chassis manufacturers need to pay attention and do their best, so do race tracks. They need to do their best,” said Slack.
“I look at race tracks and don’t see these things; maybe I’m blind to it so I can’t blame anyone. You only know your tire is flat until it goes flat, but I’ve made the comment that if race tracks can check our race cars, maybe the race car drivers should get to check the race tracks. Only fair.”
The Selinsgrove crash, much like Friesen’s, brought silence to the crowd on hand and watching on DIRTvision. It took some time, but all drivers did exit their cars on their own.
“I didn’t get to see a lot of those cars in person, but we looked at video and a lot of pictures of the chassis from the big one at Selinsgrove afterwards,” said Slack.
“Nine times out of ten when there is a bad accident or something strange, we either get to see it or get what we can in our hands to see what we could have done better.”
Five cars flipped, debris littered the half-mile from the start-finish line to turn two, and although no drivers required transport, many were shaken and possibly concussed. Ryan Godown, whose No. 26 was among the most heavily damaged, said he felt the effects of that crash for three months.
“You can’t solve all the problems. We’ll never be able to protect everybody from everything that can happen. No one can, be it NASCAR or IndyCar, but I feel when we have the opportunity to see what happened to Stew or at Selinsgrove we need to look at it,” said Slack.
‘If we don’t do anything about it, try and improve, that’s not cool. You need to take something from everything whether it be minor or major. You have to do your best even if it’s changing one small piece of tubing.”
Bicknell has since re-introduced an intrusion plate that bolts to the top of the cage above the driver’s head as an option. It comes in steel and aluminum.
“That can be simply bolted on. That was a product of an incident eight or nine years ago in Quebec when someone lost their life in another brand of race car when a bumper came through the top of a roll cage,” said Slack.
“We decided to do something and offer it. Some people liked it, some don’t. It does restrict your access getting out the top of the race car in a wreck. Some wouldn’t fit anyway. Now with the jaws of life, they’d just go in and hack them off and get you out anyway. It’s not something to enforce, but only recommend.”
Making Safety Advances,
Without Sacrificing Speed
When Bicknell decided their game plan for change, they shared their plan with their chassis-builder competition.
“We had a meeting with the other chassis builders and I shared with them openly what I was going to do and what I had done,” said Slack.
“I don’t care whose car it is, Troyer, DKM, Hig-Fab, Teo, whatever. I want everyone to be safe. Anything that can happen is a black eye to the sport. Everyone who races is either a customer or a friend. We’re all members of the same racing family.”
DIRTcar rules are discussed among promoters and tech officials during the offseason before a rule book is finalized. The new rules, however, would have to be phased in.
“I don’t know what the other builders are going to do. I have not yet heard if DIRTcar is going to mandate changes or not,” said Slack.
“For cars already built, the seat belt bar that goes across can be added. But a lot of the other stuff cannot be physically changed without cutting it up into pieces. I also don’t think any of us have been building an unsafe race car. This might have just been a one-in-a-million deal, but I do feel as a group we can do little things to make them a little better.”
Friesen made the suggestion that the rubber floor that allows the car to flex be eliminated in all cars to strengthen the center section under the driver’s seat.
“When I looked at it on Stewie’s car, I was expecting the rubber floor to look worse than it did. I guess the problem is how do we ever go back from that. The rubbered floor cars are a lot tougher than you would think. They still have structures made out of beams that are welded together,” said Slack.
“Sometimes you can’t change the entire industry even though at times you might want to. It’s just very difficult. We could probably build a car that could survive anything, but it would probably travel at about 3 1/2 miles per hour.”
With an eye always on safety, everyone at Bicknell are relentless in their efforts.
“I’ve talked to a bunch of different drivers and have gotten ideas what we could do to make these race cars safer, but it’s a total redesign and we’re still restricted by the fact that the driver and drive train is in the middle of the car,” said Slack.
“You really can’t accomplish what you would love to accomplish, much like Sprint cars. We can try and refine them a little bit, but we are so restricted.”
Winning racers focus more on performance than their own safety. Bicknell cars are purchased because they currently dominate victory lane. Slack ensured, and it’s now been proven, that nothing has changed, the 2026 chassis is already a proven winner.
“If I build a car that is safer but maybe doesn’t work as good, then we all should have to race one that is safer,” said Slack.  “Right now we have a really good package. When you make changes you always have that concern it won’t be as fast. But I have already run the 2026 car with my son Dalton.”
The new 2026 made its debut at the Gerald Haers Memorial at the Land of Legends Speedway in Canandaigua, N.Y. on September 13th.
“We were good and happy with it. Then Mat (Williamson) ran a 2026 and won with it at Oswego (Super DIRT Week). Jimmy Phelps had one there and he was good too,” said Slack.
“Matty then won Brockville (SDS) with another new one because Buzz (Chew) already has two of them. Then he was leading at Orange County in another new 2026 that Behrent’s had gotten before he broke. Jack Lehner has one and he’s been good. The demand for them has been incredible. It was a relief that we made something safer and it’s still good and fast.”
Since this interview, Williamson wrapped up a second consecutive Super DIRTcar Series title big-block Modified title with a win in the World Finals Saturday night season finale in one of Chew’s new 2026 chassis race cars.
After years of not making any changes to their chassis, the 2026 car does feature several modest performance improvements. The most noticeable is the right-front frame rail being lifted up to stop it from dragging on the track when the car is flexing at a high rate.
“The right front is raised up a little bit to help keep it out of the ground, but the main design of these cars has not changed very much in a great number of years,” said Slack.
“Been little bits of pieces changed here and there, can’t do much because we’re restricted by the width and the actual design of standard steer race car.”
Months of painful rehabilitation for Friesen followed at home after he was released from the Albany hospital. Determined to stay involved, Friesen worked the phones where Kayden Honeycutt was hired as a driver replacement for the team’s NASCAR Truck Series.
Friesen returned to the track in September at the nearby Fonda Speedway, mostly remaining in the motorhome while cheering on his wife, Jessica Friesen, who competed with his crew. He later hired rising star Alex Yankowski to drive his No. 44 at Super DIRT Week in Oswego, N.Y., and the Eastern States 200 at Orange County Speedway in Middletown, N.Y.
Despite using crutches to get around, Friesen worked hands-on with the team. Yankowski rewarded the effort with a podium at Oswego and a victory in the Eastern States 200. Jessica excelled as well at Orange County, finishing third in the 358 Modified 100.
Friesen resumed driving a street vehicle the week before going to Middletown, and his goal remains a return to competition during Speedweeks in Florida in February. He had considered attempting an earlier comeback at the World Finals in Charlotte, N.C. after watching his car win the ES 200, but his wife and those close to him strongly advised against it.
Friesen and his wife did travel to Phoenix, AZ by jet to watch Honeycutt finish the HFR Racing Truck season with a third place finish in the NASCAR point season points.
Racing is dangerious, every driver knows what’s possible, but races on without fear. Those who build the cars and make the rules are left with the job of making them as safe as possible.
“My hope is that something good can come from something that was so bad. He’s still with us, so the race car did its job,” said Slack of Friesen.
“I believe all manufacturers build safe cars – no one is out there building unsafe ones. As a group, we take safety very seriously, and I think our new 2026 model is the safest car we’ve ever produced.”
When a driver walks away from a bad incident, those behind the scenes decision makers get their own personal reward and ask for nothing more.
“When a driver crashes and the car is all banged up, but the driver isn’t injured, I can’t tell you how many times people have called us and said ‘the car is demolished but it did its job, thank you so much for building the safest race car out there’,” said Slack with emotion.
“I had another guy just recently call me, his grandson is a Sportsman racer, who took a light flip. He called to thank me for building them so safe. That’s something I really appreciate hearing because we try, we do our best, and it’s nice to know people have their trust in us.”