Two months ago, World of Outlaws contender Carson Macedo was afraid that his pursuit of a first championship was over before it could begin.
He suffered a broken tibia wakeboarding in Brisbane, Australia before the start of some off-season racing in The Land of Oz. His injury required both surgery and extensive rehab but the 28-year-old proved resilient by winning the non-points opener on Wednesday at Volusia Raceway Park.
Macedo led every lap of the 25-lap feature at the Barberville, Florida half mile and emerged from the roll cage with a noticeable limp. He says the only time he experienced pain was during a red flag to clean up a crash between Buddy Kofoid and Logan Schuchart.
“During the green flag stuff, I didn’t think about it quite as much,” Macedo said afterwards. “But when the red (flag) came out, it was beating. It had a heartbeat bigger, I felt like, than the one in my chest just from being bent like that and fatigue, I think, from pressing the brake so much.”
Macedo hasn’t revealed what happened in Australia until Wednesday night when he told Sportsnaut that it happened on a wakeboard. He showed his scar and said the incident was nearly identical to the one suffered by Chase Elliott in 2023 during a snowboarding incident in Colorado.
Elliott missed six races in the middle of the spring recovering and didn’t win a race that season, missing the playoffs as a result.
Apparently, the two talked about it.
“I was lucky enough, he was kind enough,” Macedo said. “…I was able to bounce some ideas off of him on what the recovery was going to look like, what to expect week over week, how we can be ready for this race or not, what his situation looked like in week 7 compared to what mine would look like…Just to give me an idea. He kind of helped me through that process. He was snowboarding, I was wakeboarding.”
Macedo said he also learned from Elliott that he isn’t going to get on a board again until much later in his career, wanting to prioritize the opportunity he and his sponsors have racing for some of the biggest prizes in 410 Dirt Sprint Car competition.