Race car dives into local hotel pool

Tillmans Corner, Alabama (WKRGMore) — this is not what people mean when they say “carpool”.

Race car driver Cameron Latham was driving his pickup truck with the No. 8 race car tethered to a trailer for the Snowball Derby in Pensacola Wednesday night.

Latham said he was ready to take Highway 90 and merge onto I-10 East bound for Pensacola. That is, until his race car slid off the straps and Tillmans jumped into the pool at his corner Red on his roof.

Thankfully no one was in the car or pool when it fell into the water.

Latham’s trip to Pensacola took a bit of a detour, but that didn’t stop him from going to the Derby.

“We were really disappointed, but once we figured it out, we decided to go into the race and worked all night,” Latham said.

He called a friend to take the car back to the garage, where they spent the night working on putting it back together.

His best friend, Logan Ferguson, says he tried to warn him to use a stronger strap.

“Cameron is an idiot,” said Ferguson. “I told him the strap didn’t work, but he wouldn’t listen.”

“Basically, we had to drain any new fluid he put in,” said Sean Ferguson, a friend of Latham’s. “Then we flushed it out and used diesel to clean it. Changed the spark plugs, changed the transmission fluid. All.”

But the real help was Joseph Smith.

“When they get thirsty, I give them a drink,” said Smith. “I put them on top of things.

News 5 obtained surveillance video from the Red Roof Inn of the moment the car landed in the pool. One of the employees there said Latham came to the hotel to warn him of what had happened. She said she wouldn’t believe it until she saw it with her own eyes.

Luckily for Cameron and his friends, they got the car up and running. They reached Pensacola in time for the race.

An employee at the Red Roof Inn told News 5 that they had filed an insurance claim to repair the damage, but the repairs wouldn’t be done until a month or two later.