Hello Everyone,
The past few weeks have been busy and eventful to say the least from the beginning of our Daytona weekend, to my wreck and to the week after the race.
To start off with the race weekend did not start out very well for us in practice, because we were not very fast. Come to find out, we had some bad ball joints in the front end. We had chased the car all practice and completely lost the entire four hours of practice we were given. So going into qualifying we had no idea what was going to happen with the car or how it was going to respond to our changes.
I was a little nervous going into qualifying because we were not guaranteed into the race, we had to qualify on time and we were not fast with what little practice we got. Thankfully we made it through qualifying and we made it into the race.
Now it was on to the final practice which was for drafting. During the open test the car did not draft very well so this was a crucial time for us to figure some things out. We made it through the practice but we were not happy with how the car drafted, but it was time to move on to the race.
From the drop of the green flag until lap 48 the race was going as planned for us. We had decided to drop to the back with a few other cars and try to stay out of everyone else’s problems.
Little did I know that we would be one of those problems we had been trying to avoid. Coming off turn four, I was the middle car in a three car draft, and everything was going great, until then. The car in front of me lost his harmonic balancer off of his motor, and I ran it over, I noticed he was slowing down and soon heard myself run over something.
I went to the high side of his car, as well as the car behind me. When I went high, the balancer off of the other car cut my right rear tire and it exploded. My car wiggled a little bit, straightened back out and then immediately cut loose again. When it cut loose I did what I knew to do, try and correct the car, but when I did the front tires hooked and turned me right into the wall. I hit the safer barrier with the left front of my car, and then the momentum from the car turned me on my side and I hit the wall again with my roof. Thankfully all of the safety equipment did its job and I walked away with only a minor headache.
After we finally got the car back home to the shop in Concord, it was time to tear it apart. Not too much from the car could be salvaged but there was still a lot that needed to be stripped off of the car and looked at. It took half of the week to strip everything down and get the car ready to go to the scrap yard.
I left North Carolina again on Friday and went back down to Daytona for the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series and Nationwide races, to hang around the garage and learn. It was a lot of fun and I got to meet quite a few people.
All in all the past few weeks have been a mixture of the good and the bad. Now, we’re marching forward to get ready for round two at Talladega (Ala.) Superspeedway in April.
I just want to thank everyone for their support. The notes, phones calls and other messages, I appreciate it greatly. We know that we have a great team with a lot of great people behind us. Talladega, here we come!
Email Chad Hackenbracht at [email protected]
