His eyes are gone, replaced by prosthetics. He also lost his sense of smell and taste in an accident at about 5:30 p. m. on May 22, 1997, when he was finishing another workday as the head mechanic for a trucking company in Hyannis, Mass.
Four bolts snapped and a wheel blew, hitting Blake in the face and tearing it apart. He does not remember anything about the accident — he tells the story as it was told to him later — but the damage was so devastating that others could see part of his brain.
“The cool part is that I know I’ve got one now,” he said Friday, smiling. “They’d all questioned it for years.”
After a near-death experience, extensive plastic surgery and rehabilitation, Blake decided that what he really wanted to do with the rest of his life was own a race team.
And he has. He is the owner, and the chief mechanic, of a rapidly improving top-alcohol funny-car team that will enter about 12 drag-racing events this year, including the N. H.R. A. SuperNationals at Old Bridge Township Raceway Park this weekend.
His driver is Marty Nothstein, 37, a former cyclist who won the gold medal in the 1,000-meter sprint at the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney, Australia.
“If you watch the man around a car, it’s pretty amazing,” said Nothstein, who is in his third season as a driver. “Jay knows his way around wrenches and engines, and he knows the car better than guys with vision.”
Blake remains a hands-on mechanic. He prepares spark plugs and installs them into an engine that is capable of creating more than 6,500 horsepower and propelling the car down the track at speeds up to 260 miles per hour. He escorts his car to the starting line.
Blake divorced after the accident. He had to remortgage his home to continue paying the team’s bills. Even now, every bit of money he gets from participating in events like this weekend’s he puts back into the team.
But he is getting somewhere. Nothstein finished second in the last three events the team entered, including an event last weekend in Atco, N.J., in which Nothstein ended the 47-race winning streak of a top-alcohol funny-car icon, Frank Manzo.
Blake now has a Web site, www.followadream.org, that details the progress of the team and his sideline as a motivational speaker. He says the team is capable of moving into the top level of funny-car racing in two or three years.
“I’m a regular guy who had a bad day at the office,” Blake said. “But this is what I created, and if I can do this, everyone else can.”
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