WOODS EXPERIENCES NASCAR CAMARADERIE AT COLORADO

Source: Gene Woods Racing
Date: 10/13/2004

It’s enough to restore your faith in humanity. After losing his primary car in a crash at Phoenix and being forced to bring the back up Monster Energy Drinks/Circle K Food Stores Dodge Intrepid to Colorado National Speedway for the NASCAR Grand National West Napa 150 presented by NAPA Belts and Hoses, Gene Woods thought things couldn’t get any worse, but they did. A crash in qualifying mangled the car and Woods Racing assumed their weekend, and perhaps their season, was over. That’s when Gene and his crew found out first hand just what kind of people are involved in racing as a number of his competitors joined forces to repair the damaged car for the race and Gene drove it to a top ten finish.

"We took the older car because of the crash in Phoenix thinking we would finish the year with it." Gene said. "Everything was going okay. We were gaining in practice and looking good for a top ten finish. We tried some new things in qualifying and our first lap was okay, we were 13th quick, but our second lap should have been in the top five or six the way things were looking until I went into turn one and the car just snapped around. We were carrying a lot of speed when I spun and I thought we were going to be okay. Then we hit! Back end into the wall, up in the air and then the front came around and smacked the wall as well. When we got back to the pits I got out and the car was flat to the rear window, the front was pushed in to boot. That appeared to be it for us. We were ready to load the car into the hauler when Larry Nava and his guys from the 17 and 77 cars came over and said "let’s try to fix this thing".

"They worked two solid hours on our car. You need to keep in mind this is the team we’re in the points battle with. Other teams came by to see if there was anything they could do. We also borrowed a welder from Bill McAnally of the 16 car and a drive shaft from the 61 car. This is something I have never experienced in any other form of racing and it made me feel real good about the series we are in. The car was set on the ground about five minutes before the race was going to start. It was a real group effort by a lot of teams that worked with our team to get us in the race.

"When we went out I wasn’t expecting to do more than just start the race and make a couple of laps to get the points, but the car felt good enough to race so we did and I hung onto it for the entire 150 laps. We were on the lead lap in tenth place at the end. Not bad considering we thought we were going home early in the day.

"I would like to say a personal thank you not only to our team but to all the other guys and teams that helped us out, especially the Performance Motorsports team and Larry and Joe Nava".

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