ELKIN, N.C. – Despite a first-lap, first-turn accident that ended his night far earlier than he would have liked, 18-year-old Jake Karklin captured his first Carolina No Bull Sprint Series championship on Saturday night at Friendship Motor Speedway.

Karklin, whose only prior racing experience before this season was in a quarter midget at eight years old, inherited the point lead when championship frontrunner Johnny Bridges didn’t appear to run the finale due to a prior scheduling conflict.

The teenager then won his heat race and held enough of an advantage over second-place Jay Deming that all he had to do to lock up the crown was take the green flag for the 30-lap finale feature.

Unfortunately, Karklin’s night didn’t last much longer than that.

Karklin clipped a spinning Johnny Kolosek in turn two of the first lap, causing enough damage to the front end of his No. 33 Aaron’s Trucking/Doug McLain Trucking/Panther Frameworx entry to sideline it for the remainder of the night.

“Once Johnny started spinning … we were both running the top and there’s not much room to get out of the way here at Friendship,” Karklin explained. “I didn’t have much time to react and there was nowhere I could go. It was either hit the wall or hit him, and I unfortunately got into him and ended both our nights.”

After coming to rest, Karklin took off out of his wounded machine like an Olympic sprinter down the backstretch, making a beeline for the pit area in an attempt to get parts and repair his race car.

However, by rule, exiting his car under caution meant that Karklin was done for the night – even if he wasn’t thinking about that fact at the time.

“I saw two radius rods that were bent up, that if we could have had two minutes to repair them, we would have had a chance to continue, but it wasn’t meant to be,” he lamented. “They wanted to get the show going and we had to bite the bullet.”

The mission was already accomplished, however, and Karklin’s first title was secure. His emotions were clear afterwards, both from his early exit and from the realization of his goals.

“This means a lot. It’s a signal that everything I’ve dreamed of my whole life is coming a little bit closer, and that’s what it’s all about,” said Karklin. “We had a rough night tonight, but we had a good year throughout and that’s what got us this championship in the end.

“You have bad nights and good nights in racing, and to do what we did comes down to maximizing the cards that you’re dealt and I feel like we did that as well as anyone this season. I’m really proud of this team and the effort put in by everyone involved. This is just a great moment.”

Karklin ended his season with three heat-race wins, as well as five top-five and six top-10 finishes in seven feature starts. His best result was third, achieved three times in the first five races.

“We were very consistent in this club,” he noted. “We got three wins between two other series we raced with this season, but we just could never quite seal the deal here with CNBS. It was a lot of little things that kept us out of victory lane over here, but a championship makes up for a lot of those near-misses, for sure.”

Karklin also confirmed that his plan, at least as of Saturday night, is to return full time next season.

“With how close everything is, I think we’ll be back to defend the title,” he smiled. “We’re capable of going after it again.”