Jun 7th, 2011 by T.C.
Shortly after the end of Saturday night’s Nationwide Series race at Chicagoland Speedway, a group of race team employees found themselves suddenly unemployed and without a way to get home to Charlotte. It was a sad example of what sometimes happens at the many “we don’t offer a 401K” race teams. In the era of the start-and-park, it seems as though anybody can own a race team and sometimes that’s not a good thing.
The plight of driver Tim Andrews and the now ex-employees of 2nd Chance Motorsports was first made known via Andrews’ Twitter account (@Tim_Andrews_) early Sunday morning. The ladies over at Skirts and Scuffs followed up and got the full story later on Sunday. From their post, here’s what went down in a nut shell:
After loading up the car into the team hauler Crew Chief Kevin Eagle informed Russell that he would be parting ways with 2nd Chance once they got back to the Charlotte area. Upon hearing the news Russell accused the whole team of leaving and instead of allowing Eagle to explain that he would be the only one leaving the team Russell fired everyone associated with the No. 79, including it’s driver Tim Andrews.
Russell followed the terminations up by telling all involved that they would need to find their own way home and that he would not allow them into the team’s van to collect their personal effects. Nothing like adding a little insult to injury.
After local police got involved the guys were later allowed to get their things, and with help from some other teams, get home to Charlotte. Thank god there are still plenty of really good people in racing.
If the name Rick Russell sounds familiar to you, it should. You might remember that he was the owner involved in the infamous Jennifer Jo Cobb incident earlier in the season at Bristol. The two parted ways literally minutes before the NNS race because Cobb refused to start-and-park. Andrews joined the team a short time later.
Situations like these with unscrupulous owners are nothing new in NASCAR. There are plenty of examples over the years of drivers and crew members getting burned by shady owners and fly-by-the-night operations. We’ve even documented a few on this website.
It’s certainly a shame, but with so much money surrounding the sport, it’s bound to happen. Short fields have made the barrier to entry much smaller, and in some cases that’s not good. We feel good and love to talk about independents like Tommy Baldwin Racing when they have success, but we don’t often hear about all those hurt by bad deals and teams gone wrong.
I must say that I don’t know a lot more about this particular story than what has been reported online. Russell may have a very different view of the way things went down. In any case though, I’m not sure how you justify stranding a group of people, of whom you had just previously called employees, nearly 800 miles from home. Hopefully all of those involved will land on their feet.
TheNASCARInsiders.com
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