It was bound to happen... I just wish it wasnt the 2nd time the car hit the track!
Now, you may be asking yourself, "Eddie, shouldn't that be attached to the car?" Well, yes, as a matter of fact it should be. However, it DID do a valiant job of staying with the car until the bitter end of this weekends race. In fact, I found it quite nice of the car to wave its door, side skirt and half a fender at the crowd as it came by the stands each lap. As you can see by the photos, we had a little issue..
In thier ultimate wisdom, the track went back to a double file restart rule this week. We were told that they had "supreme confidence" in the ability of the drivers to make it work and put on a good show. A good show... if by that they meant crashing half of the field off and taking almost 2 hours to run a 40 lap race, mission accomplished. I am pretty sure we ran more laps under yellow than green. You know the old saying, cautions breed cautions? Oh so very true!
We spent the better part of the day adjusting the car, tweaking this and that and were making good progress. By the time the heat races were over, we had discussed a few things with our chassis guru and bingo... the car and driver were getting pretty racy. We didn't qualify really well as a brake locked up going into turn 3, so we started mid pack for the main. By lap 30 or so, Scott was cruising along nicely, having become very adept at avoiding wrecks that were happening right in front of him. Then, it happened... A couple of cars got together in turn 3 and Scott got the car slowed down and just missed them, however, the car behind him did not and wham, the rear end damage you see above was inflicted. This pushed him up and over one of the wrecked cars that he had just avoided and you get what we see below.
Can you spot where the parts in the first picture of this post were??? Luckily, at this point most of the damage is cosmetic. We will perform a closer inspection of the car tomorrow when we put it up on the lift and take a peek. It looks like a long week at the old Team LaCross race shop. If you're in the neighborhood, stop by and say hi, bring coffee, donuts, red bull... we will need it! :-)
We were able to finish the race, door and fender flapping in the breeze and slapping against the roof. (Scott said he looked over after the accident thinking someone was right next to him and realized that 66 he was seeing was an upside down 99!) By staying out there, we were able to garner a 10th place finish, so on the positive side, we so far have been accomplishing our goal of finishing in the top ten at each race.
After the race, several of our fellow racers came by with offers of parts, assistance and condolences on the destruction of as one put it, "the prettiest car at the track". Just like the 6 Million Dollar Man, we have the technology and we will rebuild it... better, stronger and faster!
Love the Pipe Down sticker and snow flake graphics . That was quite a stop and go race. I heard all about it through Bryce at work. YES dancing with the stars is rigged. But we have to give a little as guys to watch all those hours of NASCAR on the weekends haha. GO SPEEDRACER GO (getrdone) Jeff B.
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