SPRING VALLEY, Minn. -- The titanium plates in Brian Hayden's head are a constant reminder to enjoy every night he's on the racetrack.

"This is all about having fun," the 42-year-old Hayden said Thursday, prior to competing in the second night of the World Modified Dirt Track Championship at Deer Creek Speedway. "If we do well, it's a bonus."

Hayden's perspective stems from a pair of wrecks just days apart, while he was driving a Sprint Car during Indiana Sprint Week in 2004. Hayden suffered a concussion in the first wreck, but ... "like a dummy, I kept racing," he said. "I got in another wreck, had a (brain) aneurysm and they ended up taking me to Cincinnati for brain surgery. Now I have these plates in my head."

If the plates remind Hayden of those wrecks seven years ago, the scars on his right hand are just as much of a reminder of a horrifying wreck at Winchester (Ind.) Speedway in 1998.

While competing at a USAC race on the asphalt track at Winchester, Hayden had his back tire clipped while going 140 mph. The car went airborne, with the back end flipping over the front end as he flew down the frontstretch. His car turned into a fireball and broke into pieces as it struck the wall and catchfence at the entrance to Turn 1.

As Hayden scrambled to get his seatbelt off and get out of the car. He pulled his right hand out of his glove, not realizing that the fire in the car had melted his gloves to the steering wheel. He stuck his hand directly into the fire to undo his belt.

He never lost consciousness, but he hurried out of the car, rolling toward the grass infield as emergency personnel sprayed him with a fire extinguisher.

"My hand swelled up right away. If I would've been knocked out, I wouldn't have tried to take my glove off," Hayden said. "They'd have probably come and put out the fire and I would have been OK."

The burned hand and the brain operation were big factors in his Sprint Car career coming to an end, but they couldn't keep Hayden away from a race track. Three years ago, late in the racing season, he purchased a Modified and ran it three times.

He decided to stick with it not only because he enjoyed it, but also because one of his close friends and crew members, Bill Gardner, wanted him to.

"He has cancer, been fighting it for 17 years," Hayden said. "The doctors told him there's nothing they can do anymore. He told me 'I'd just like to get back to Victory Lane a couple more times.'

"I wouldn't say we do all of this just for him, but it's a big part and it definitely got us back into it."

Hayden grew up around racing in Indiana.

His grandfather and cousins raced. His dad co-owned a Late Model. And, oh yeah, his mother raced, too.

"She was the first female driver ever (in the mid-1970s) at Lincoln Park Speedway (in Putnamville, Ind.)," said Hayden, who is at Deer Creek Speedway this week to compete in the World Modified Dirt Track Championship.

So, it was logical that Hayden would become a racer. He started in motocross at age 13, then jumped right into a Late Model when he was 16. He put his racing career aside for a few years after getting married, then got back into motocross.

Eventually, he had to scratch the itch to get back in a racecar, so he began running a Sprint Car, in an area that is full of top-notch Sprint Car drivers. He was a tough competitor from the start, winning Rookie of the Year honors at Lincoln Park Speedway in 1990.

Hayden captured his first track championship in 1995, then set out on a costly, but enjoyable venture, supporting his own team as a full-time driver on the USAC Sprint Car Series in 1996. It was during that season that he struck up a friendship with a future NASCAR star.

Hayden was also running for a track championship at LPS that season, and happened to have a USAC race on the same day as the final points race at LPS. He raced his USAC car into the A Main, then handed it off to a young driver named Tony Stewart.

"It was running late, I had to get out of (the USAC race), I had a police escort waiting to get me to Putnamville," Hayden said. "Tony had crashed in his B Main, so he came over and asked if I still wanted him to drive my car (in the A). He went out and won the Silver Crown Series title, I went back and won my track title.

"We split the driver's share of the winnings for the USAC race, so the next week he called me and said 'Hey, did you ever get paid for that race? I could use the $70.'"

Hayden laughed at the thought of Stewart needing $70.

"It's been a lot of fun to follow his career," Hayden said.

Hayden has also done pretty well, in his dirt track career. After a series of accidents ended his Sprint Car career, he turned to a Modified. He hasn't raced every race at his home track, but he is third in the points standings and has won six of his 12 starts this season.

"We're on a pretty limited budget, but we have 12 or so wins," he said. "We haven't raced with (the USMTS) guys before, so, shoot, if we even made the feature (at the WMDTC) I'd be tickled."

Hayden arrived in southeastern Minnesota last Saturday. He raced at Deer Creek that night and at Dodge County Speedway in Kasson on Sunday. Other than that, he said, "we've done a lot of laying around. It'll be tough to go back to work next week."