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A letter from
Digger Don's former intern Lee Childers who now works on the dragster
teams of Rhonda Hartman and John Smith sponsored by Fram
and Prestone. They run over 300 mph in the 1/4 with the
"goats" catching the blame for all sorts of maladies.
Hey All,
It's been 5 races since the last E-mail and in that
time those damn goats have gotten a lot accomplished.
Turns out that the goats have built a weather machine
to continue their reign of chaos on Hartman
Motorsports. Each of the 5 races were delayed by
rain. Our road trip took us to Englishtown, New Jersy
to Topeka, Kansas to Chicago, Illinois to Richmond,
Virginia and finally to Columbus, Ohio. That's an
awful lot of zig zags all over our country.
Our first stop in Englishtown saw the debut of
Rhonda's brand new race car. It was assembled in a
fury before Atlanta in order to test it before
Englishtown, however the test day in Atlanta was
rained out so it showed up in Englishtown untest and
FULL of GOATS!! The first time out the car was steady
flying down the race track until about half track when
it ACTUALLY DID start to fly! The car did a pretty
crazy wheel stand about half track and Rhonda clipped
it off. Some people say they saw some goats out there
picking up the front end. And Rhonda's car did the
identical thing the second time. Man, looks like
those goats are getting stronger.
And then the Goats kicked in their weather machine and
the rains came
and they came
and they didn't stop.
Qualifying was rained out and Rhonda did not qualify.
Rhonda was not happy.
And in the back, all you heard was goat laughter.
Our car did qualify and put us up against Brandon
Berstein. That Budweiser car that we lost against in
the Gainesville final. That same car that we lost
against to 13 times last year. Hopefully, Maybe,
tomorrow would be our day.
Sunday came up and both cars left hard and they were
neck and neck.
Until... The Beer car smokes!
Berstien smokes the tires and our car keeps going!!
Its looking real good for us. And then our tires
start smoking. Brandon sees this and starts a
pedaling contest between him and Bodie. All I can see
is tire smoke, I could hear our car out in front and
then I knew we had won!
But then I see Brandon's car come blazing sideways
through the smoke, crossed up and sideways in a way
that wasn't gonna be good. He caught it and over
corrected hard. The car whipped back around and
started to roll! Brandon is still in the throttle!
The pipes are still lit as the car FLIPS OVER THE
WALL. The tires are flung off the car as the engine
grenades itself to a stop. We finally win against a
Berstien but he really hurts himself in the process.
The race car is destroyed and he has to be flown to
the hospital. He is going to be out for the rest of
the season with the injuries he sustained in that
accident. Meanwhile we had won and hurried back to
the pits to service our car and prepare it for the
second round against Jim Head.
Second round comes up and the Goats are unleashed!
Our does a burnout on only one tire! That ain't good.
Damn Goats had chewed through the splines between the
hub and axle on the left wheel. Leaving us with a car
incapable on doing anything beyond a one wheel burnout.
All for now...... Lee
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