Putman ‘90-Percent Recovered’ From ATV Accident, Looks Forward to Racing

Charlie Putman’s life changed in the blink of an eye.

Back on Sept. 14 he was heading home, less than two miles from his ranch near Casper, Wyoming. Suddenly his ATV flipped and Putman found himself trapped beneath the vehicle. After spending a night in near freezing temperatures and much of the next day, Putman was rescued by the diligent efforts of “a friend of a friend.” After spending time in the hospital with serious injuries, Putman is well on the road to recovery, and is already looking forward to returning to competition in 2015.

The 2010 Continental Tire SportsCar Challenge Grand Sport (GS) champion with Charles Espenlaub for Fall-Line Motorsports, Putman also raced full-time in the GRAND-AM Rolex Series GT division with Dempsey Racing. This past season, he co-drove an Audi R8 LMS with Espenlaub for Fall-Line in the TUDOR United SportsCar Championship GT Daytona (GTD) class, with their best finish sixth in the Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring Fueled by Fresh From Florida.How are you feeling and how is the progress of your recovery?“I’m about 90 percent right now, and I’m really doing well. I’m much better, much quicker, than anybody expected. But I think part of that came from being in good condition before I had the accident, so my conditioning is coming back pretty quick. I’m able to drive around and do everything for myself. Right now, if you saw me walking into a restaurant for lunch you wouldn’t know the difference. It’s been a really fast recovery, particularly over the past few weeks. It was a bad experience, but I expect to be fully recovered in about another month.”What exactly happened?“I was riding an off-road ATV, out doing chores. It was towards the end of the day, and I was about a mile and a half from home around 4 p.m., heading home in open terrain. I decided not to take a particular route home because I felt it had been a long day and I didn’t feel like riding over that rough terrain. I decided to head west and take an easier route. I’m not sure what happened then – I have about 30 seconds of amnesia from when the ATV flipped over – but I must have dropped a wheel in a ditch and it instantly flipped over. I was sliding face down in the dirt and dust and thinking ‘Holy cow, let’s keep this bike off of me,’ but that didn’t work out. I slid to a stop, and it slid to a stop on top of me. Its weight was resting on my back, and I couldn’t move at all. I was trapped. There I sat.”What were the details of your rescue?“I figured that my wife would patiently wait until after dinner – at least until after dark – before she started looking, and I knew they were not going to find me because I wasn’t on any trail, I was out in the middle of nowhere. I knew I would just have to hunker down for the night and try to stay warm. Dianne called Search and Rescue, and they were very good, they got right out there. The Civil Air Patrol was looking with heat seekers, but they could not find my heat signature because I was underneath the four-wheeler. The following morning, one of my friends called another friend – who has a ranch about 40 miles away – and asked him to bring his airplane. So now we had a couple Civil Air Patrols, a volunteer helicopter and another volunteer in an airplane looking for me.“This friend of a friend was the most determined of the group, and he knew how to look for things down low. He came in flying low and was smart enough to pick up my tracks and follow my tracks – which were very hard to see – and he found me. He found me and gave my co-ordinates to the Search and Rescue people. Officially, it took them seven minutes to get to me after he spotted me, but that was after I had been laying there for 20-plus hours.”What was the extent of your injuries?“I was extremely dehydrated, broken ribs on either side of my rib case, an open compression wound on my back from the heavy weight of the bike laying there for so long, and that was the main concern. Fortunately there was no concussion, oddly enough. Also, all the dehydration and the wound put a lot of stress on my kidneys, so they watched them for a while, worrying about renal failure. But my kidneys came through. I was just as uncomfortable as I could be for a long while.”With your recovery ahead of schedule, do you have any racing plans for 2015?“I’ve been talking about doing a few races in the Continental Tire SportsCar Challenge, and I’m hoping to be back in the Porsche GT3 Cup Challenge USA, and doing a good deal of those races. We have nothing currently planned in the TUDOR Championship. A lot of my planning has been to do some overseas racing – we went overseas a few years ago and had a lot of fun – so Charles and I are locked in for three races leading up to the 24 Hours of Nurburgring. Fortunately, those races don’t conflict with anything on the IMSA schedules, so we’re looking to do both. Any plans on the musical front?“I’m being encouraged to do another album. Unfortunately, that encouragement does not realize how much work that takes to put together. I’m writing some new material, and hope to get back in the studio at some point. All the proceeds from my CD went to Camp Boggy Creek. The music is a gift to me, and I wanted to do something with it. We haven’t made a fortune for them, but we’ve had a steady stream of checks going there – and 90-percent of the sales have been from the racing community.”When do you plan to get back in a race car?“I probably will not be at the Roar. I wasn’t ready to commit to a race in January before I knew I was ready to do it. I’m going to try to do some testing in late December, and hopefully it will go good and I will be cleared to go. I may show up at the Rolex 24 to hobnob and socialize a bit, but at this point I’m not planning to drive in it.”