Doug West & The Month of May?

As everyone is aware Wilkins Motorsports did not start the month of May off the way it would have liked. To recap, Sandy wrecked on his first pass at Piedmont dragway at the Big Dog race. Then he found a used front end in Ohio and went their and back on a Saturday while using a lot of that high priced diesel. He then traveled to Chapman's Auto Body in Conover, NC to drop off the race car. A week later, (today), Sandy arrived by at Chapman's to pick up what appeared to be a brand new race car. As always Chuck did an outstanding job in a minimal amount of time. Now we are ready for Mooresville.

That leads us to our buddy Doug West. Doug began helping us at the beginning of the year and has been a great help in every area. He eventually went to work for Sandy at his engine shop. Last Thursday night while testing a friends 87 Camaro at Benson Dragway, Doug was involved in a single car wreck. We still do not know what happened. He made a pass in the 4.80 range at 145mph and the car ended up wrapped around a light pole at the far end of the shut down area. He was unconscious and had to be cut out. He is in a Raleigh hospital in intensive care. Doug is in a drug induced coma with a shattered elbow, a fractured eye socket and swelling on the brain. We did get excellent news today. They say that while he is still in a drug induced coma, he is giving the thumbs up to the doctors commands. That is wonderful news.

As you have read, the race car has become the least of Sandy's worries. His main concern now is to see his buddy get better. I can not believe I don't have a pic of Doug in my archive. If you go to the photo gallery on the home page and click on the first place at Rockingham gallery, y0u can see him there. Doug's pic is #28 and #30. Please remember to say a prayer for Doug West today. Come by Sandy's pit and ask about Doug this coming weekend in Mooresville, NC. See you there.

Don

A MOTHER OF A WEEK! Part 2

Hello everyone, i'm finally able to finish my story. As posted in the last blog we spent 15.5 hours and 1045 miles on the road last Saturday. Well of course Sunday was mothers day, and you have to spend mothers day with your mom! So i hopped back in the truck and headed two hours east to Wilmington. I arrived in Wilmington at 10:45 and headed straight to the surf club in Wrightsville beach. The entire family met at 11:00 for a wonderful mothers day lunch! It is always great to spend time with the family, but holidays and special occasions are my favorite. Mothers day is always special but my sister had some incredible news! She informed me after lunch that i was going to be an uncle again, YAY!!!!!!! The picture above was taken just after she told me. I'm a little red in the face. Lol. She had obviously kept the news close to her chest, as she was now in her 10th week. I am sooo excited for her and her husband Joel and son Banks. As you can see Banks is a precious nephew and will make a great big brother. That afternoon my mom, dad, and myself went downtown to visit my aunt Jane and uncle Dave. My cousins were there also and we had a great, but short visit. That evening it was time to head back to Raleigh, so back in the truck and west bound i head. Next weekend "Road Trip!"

Stay tuned
Sandy

A MOTHER OF A WEEK! Part 1

Hey everyone, Don normally handles the blogs but i decided to get everybody up to date with whats happening. Like the title says it has been a mother of a week, literally. It has been busy at the shop which is great, but trying to juggle work and play is extremely hard. Wednesday was my scheduled day to take the CDL driving test. My instructor made it seem like i was taking the SAT all over again! Good news, i passed on the first try. Towards the end of the week Mark Malcuit called and let me know that he had a 2003 cavalier nose for sale. It just so happened i was in the process of purchasing a new nose from GM so the call came at the perfect time. Mark and i made a deal over the phone, so off we go!

So here it is Saturday morning 4:45am, Jeff Whitley and myself head off towards Strasburg Ohio to pick up Marks cavalier nose. We make one stop for breakfast and arrive in Strasburg at 12:30pm. Mark Malcuit is a fellow top sportsman racer, and as you can see has a top notch operation. He is also one of the only other guys running a small block in top sportsman, therefore we have allot to talk about! The front end looks like what we need, so we load it up, grab lunch and head back to North Carolina. It was a marathon trip but we were back at my house at 9:45pm Saturday night. Ok so here are the stats!

Travel distance - 1043 miles

Travel time - 17 hrs. total 15 1/2 driving time

Miles per gallon - 9.5

Average mph - 67.3 mph

So we made it back in time to watch the last 70 laps of the Darlington race, very exciting. Believe it or not i was not tired, but i decided to head to bed around 11:30.

Sunday morning 8am, ROAD TRIP! but i will have to let you know about this one in another blog.

Sandy

Hero to a Zero!!! Ouch!!!

Hello everyone. If you keep up with Sandy, you probably know he crashed the Cavalier last Thursday at Piedmont Dragway. Sandy was OK, but car will need some plastic surgery. We will call this blog, Hero to a Zero.

I say Hero to a Zero because this was the first race after the big win at Rockingham. Sandy was still flying high with emotions and this was the first pass down the track. The car drove toward the center line and when Sandy lifted, the car bit hard left toward the wall. Sandy corrected and the car came around on him. From the starting line it looked as if he was going to save it and then the concrete wall jumped out at him. The front end supports were bent and broke along with pushing the fuel cell into the radiator. One of the fuel cell bars also broke. After checking everything out, Sandy said let's fix it.

With help from Chuck Chapman of Chapman's Auto Body, the front end was reworked and bandaged up to make another run. Everyone performed their routine maintenance while Sandy worked on the fuel cell situation. Can you believe he made it up for the first qualifying run. A 4.39 pass after crashing an hour before. On his second pass he stepped it up to a 4.34, but that fell short of the record 4.27 bump. Sandy ended up 14th and had to run Todd Tutterow in the consolation race. Sandy goes 4.36 to Todd's 4.18. Race over.

While the wreck could have been worse, Sandy estimates it will cost around five thousand to repair the car. He chose to sit out the Madd Dog race at Farmington Saturday night to go over the whole car. He is looking at six weeks on a 04 Cavalier front end. So he will probably miss Milan, Michigan. It will take some time, but he will get it fixed and come out strong as always. If you want your name on a new front end, now is the time to help. Sponsors needed.

Don