Mitch Guthrie JR Battles, Glitches At The MINT 400. 

As a MINT 400 rookie everything was new to me. It was my first time racing it so I knew that just like every race it was going to be a learning experience.

Friday we went through tech and contingency which was absolutely crazy! Going to this really gives you an idea of how big this race really is and it is so cool to be apart of it. After the craziness of tech and contingency we headed back to Primm to finish everything up and get some rest before race day!

Alarm going off at 4:30 A.M. Saturday morning, it was go time. First cars were off the line at 6 so about 10 minutes later it was our turn. I was feeling very confident knowing we had gotten a lot of our problems with the car figured out so I was mainly hoping for another solid race! Boom the green flag drops and we are off the line. With the 2 lane start we were able to holeshot the car next to us and get a good start to the Mint 400!

Problems Early

There was just one problem the car seemed very bogged down and underpowered just as it felt at the last race. I kept going and just wanted to get going before we tried to figure out what was wrong. I let the main pit know what was going on and we just kept up a good pace trying to catch the people in front of us. We did get by some of the people in front of us but also people from the rows behind us were beginning to pass us.

I was pretty bummed at this point knowing that we didn’t have a car that was running at 100%. So we kept pushing but all of a sudden coming out of a corner around mile 40 the car lost just about all of the power it had and we were now down to about 30 MPH down the straight aways… something was really wrong. Knowing that we couldn’t race like this and be competitive I pulled over to try and figure out what was wrong. I just simply shut the car off and on a couple of times, took off, and boom we had full power again. I was so pumped we were on the gas it was like a totally different car and we were passing people left and right… until the car lost power again. There seemed to be nothing we could do about it so I kept going shutting the car off and on every once in awhile but it didn’t seem to help anymore.

We were almost done with our 1st lap, around mile 90 when the car wasn’t steering straight, I immediately thought it was an axle so my co-dog Kurtis hopped out to see what was up, it was just a flat tire which we quickly got changed and were back on the track.

Main pit we gassed up assessed the car and got going again. I didn’t want to even mess with the car and try to get the problem fixed because I knew it would take awhile and it was something I could deal with. Lap 2 was pretty clean we once again kept a good pace, got in the groove, and started passing cars. We had a clean lap and came into the main pit for our 3rd and final lap.

In the pits we thought a new ECU would fix our problem so we put a new one in but now the car wouldn’t even run. We put in the old ECU and it was time to deal with it. Lap 3 I gave it my all we were still in a great position, around 5th place, and I was content with that with the problems we were having. Coming towards Pit B we were on the homestretch I believe we were 2nd in class and around 5th overall. Just as we turn into Pit B the car looses power and won’t turnover. Me and my co-driver immediately hopped out and tried to figure out what was wrong. Thankfully we broke right at the pit so one of the the awesome BITD volunteers towed us too our pit and my crew went to work on our car.

Our exhaust actually fell off so we assumed that was our problem. Big thanks to Gene Towler who welded up my exhaust dropping some dimes and had it looking good as new! Unfortunately this wasn’t our problem so we kept looking, this went on and on for about an hour until we unfortunately had to call it. We looked over everything tried everything and unfortunately just couldn’t figure it out. Our Mint 400 experience was done.

It really was a heart breaker, but I know that we have to just keep pushing and we will get all of these problems solved. We have the car, the speed, the crew, and some awesome sponsors supporting us and I am not letting any of these problems get to me.

A big thank you to everyone who is apart of our Mint 400 team!!!!!!