Sneak peak into what happens when the racing season gets put on hold.

Hey everyone out there in self isolation land. I hope you are all maintaining social distance and staying safe. Don’t forget to keep your paws to yourself to prevent the spread of covid-19.

Most people are probably wonder what all of us road mechanics have been up to since they delayed the season. Well I’m going to give you a little inside peak.

Some of the larger teams immediately sent their guys home or put them on very restricted schedules to keep people in the building to a minimum. Others had to lay off employees until we go back because they don’t have the budget to fill payroll without any income, when we don’t race sponsor money doesn’t come in.

My team on the other hand because we are so much smaller and our deal came together just a few weeks before Daytona this gave us a chance to get caught up and ahead before we go back. Of course we were all practicing social distance and sanitizing everything at the end of the day. We moved to alternating days pretty quickly to keep the amount of people in our shop under 10. There was a large amount of cleaning and organizing the first week along with prepping all of our cars as much as we can to be ready for when we go back. 

A bunch of my friends that haven’t been able to go to work have started going stir crazy after a week, our normal routine is constant go from January all the way until November. With all this happening after 4 races we had all just got back in our wide open traveling groove just to be told to stay home and not work on race cars it’s a big adjustment.

Lowe’s has been a very busy place in Mooresville, NC where majority of us live. All the guys that had projects around the house they’d “get to when they had time” have finally got them done, between fire pits, new flooring, painting, and buildings decks you name it it’s probably being done at these guys houses. All we know is how to build stuff with our hands and when we can’t build race cars we find other outlets to keep us occupied.

Me on the other hand I’ve been working hard on new designs and marketing campaigns for Torq’d along with a laundry list of craft projects I had waiting or have taken on now that all of North Carolina is on a 30 day stay at home order. I will be making some more quilts soon out of old fire suits so stay tuned to see that, there is so much history in those suits and stories to back them up they are always fun and challenging for me to make.

I’ve had a large amount of people ask when we are going back or what the plans are for Nascar. Honestly I know as much as you guys do. The best account to follow on twitter for updates is @bobpockrass he always knows everything first even when we are at the track, 99% of the time he knows it before the crew guys do. He also has a tendency to make people in the garage nervous when he’s hanging around your car because you never know if he knows something you don’t good or bad.

One thing we do know is when we go back racing it will be wide open no weekends off until we race Phoenix for the championship. They have every intention to race all the missed races along with our current schedule, the plan is to have everything made up before we enter playoffs so that to be several races a week or the schedule will be pushed into December. We honestly have no clue what will happen until everything with covid-19 plays out, everything right now is speculation and guessing.

If you guys have any questions that I didn’t cover comment down below and I’ll do my best to answer you.