Stout Survives Nasty Crash at Mid-Ohio

Author: robertstoutracing.com

Date: 2009-08-18 00:00:00

During a test day, one day before the next NASA Great Lakes regional event, in the last session on lap 2 Robert Stout truly put his Lucas Oil backed E3 Spark Plugs Pro-Challenge car dressed with Kumho Tires and Hawk brakes to the test and it passed with flying colors.           

 

      Robert’s father and team owner Ken Stout said “It’s easy to start placing blame in a time like this but I’ll choose to look at everything that went right in this bad situation. First let me say thanks to John Litzinger and the gang at Pro-Challenge for building a safe car! Thanks to Peter Cozzolino at Cozzolino Motorsports for adding all the safety aspects to this car that I insisted be done at the start of the year with the addition of his experience and knowledge. Special Thanks to Bill Simpson from Impact Race Products for the safety belts and helmet, Thanks to the HANS people for their devise and thanks to the safety crew as well. All of these people and items worked perfectly in the car and because of that Robert climbed out with just a sore right foot. According to the Race-Pak data logger in the car he hit the guy that spun out in front of him at about 70 MPH. As you can see above the crush zone on the car worked perfectly! We can and will fix the car before the Championships but the great news is we’ll have a driver that is in perfect shape because all the safety aspects of this car did their job”!

 

Robert Stout said “I was coming out of turn 10 and heading up over the blind knoll to 11 and I guess the driver in a spec Focus had spun on the back side. By the time I saw him I’m told he was trying to back out of the line but it was just too late for me. When I saw him he was still on the track so I hammered the brakes but it was while I was cresting the hill making the car light so the tires locked up making it impossible to miss him. I don’t think anybody did anything wrong it was just a racing thing that happens. I’m just glad nobody got hurt. If it had been a 3,000 pound SU car that makes 850HP things could have been much worse for the Focus driver”.
 

All was not lost in regards to the Championship as Stout received some help in the form of a borrowed car from a fellow racer. Robert said “A guy by the name of Sam Myers told my dad we could use his car to run the race and earn some points if we’d like. 
 

It is a car that runs in the slower class of PTE but we’re allowed to race a slower car in a faster class legally so we took advantage of his offer and at least earned some starting points. The cool thing about it was we had never met Sam Myers before, he came out of no where and offered us his race car! The people out here are unbelievably cool and everybody for the most part helps everybody, it’s awesome!!
 

The Lucas Oil team has their work cut out for them in the next couple of weeks to get ready for their next event to be held at Gingerman Raceway in South Haven, Mi. and then a 1500 mile trip to Utah the following weekend for the NASA National Championships.  Game On Baby!!