Hey guys I have an update.
First the important stuff.
Mike's surgery is delayed until tomorrow, looks like he is going to need a screw and atleast one pin in his left leg. He also broke a bone in his left foot, the good news is that his knee joint is OK and his back pain was just an old injury flaring up from the impact.
My phone and my E mail have been blowing up with people wanting to know more about what happened. I passed along ALL the well wishes, love, and prayers to Mike. He is pretty hard nosed but even he appreciated all the love you guys and gals have been sending us. So do I, its nice to know how how much the other racers like and respect us.
A few people have asked me if I want the pictures of the car taken down from social media. Thank you for the offer, but no I don't. As bad as this crash was it could (should?) have been a lot worse. I have been injured a few times racing cars, I don't pretend that it can't happen. I think we ALL need to acknowledge that this can happen, and we need to plan an prep for things like this.
Now some comments:
What can we learn from this crash?
Looking at my car my cage held up well. It started out life as an autopower cage, BUT we did some serious mods to the cage to beef it up, not only for the rules but also in general to make the car safe, Mike was just one of 5 different friends of mine that have raced in that car. The Drivers side floor was pretty rotten when we got the car, so we added a bunch of new metal to it, I can only imagine how much worse it would have been had we not done that. I'm going to look into adding some more metal in the drivers foot well to our next car. That is the only lesson that I am taking away from this crash. The engine tried to push the firewall into Mike, but the cage stopped it, the door wrapped around both bars but didn't push any further.
The crash itself:
The reason I didn't mention the track or the series we were racing in last weekend was because I didn't want to cast a bad light on either. We had a camera in the car when Mike crashed, he came into the kink and then CAR!!! There was nothing he could have done, it was one of "those" crashes. The fact that it was THIS track and THAT series...had nothing to do with it. Nor did the fact that it was Lemons cars on the track at the same time as faster machines.
Moving forward.
I really do appreciate all the offers to drive while we are doing another car. Fact of the matter is I would love to do so, I'm able to do the midwest races and I'm pretty much self sufficent so yes if you will have me Id love to see how some of the other race cars preform compared to my old one.
I'm going to strip as much junk out of Frankie as I can, and I have everyone on the lookout for a new car. I have a lot of GM stuff so that is what I will most likely be doing next. But at this point who knows. We will be back is all I can say for the moment.
Matt.
Team Sucker Punch: Winner Class B Doing Time at Joliet 2023 Autobahn ,Winner Org Choice award Were the Elite Meet to Cheat 2015
Chevy Camaro (Tiger striped #38) (1989-2017 RIP old friend)
Chevy Corvette 1984......and still racing!