NCWTS: ThorSport Racing Begins Recovery Process Following Fire on Monday

ThorSport Racing is beginning to climb their way back up the ladder after a fire broke out early Monday morning in the basement of the race shop in Sandusky, Ohio. ThorSport Racing will have all four entries at Iowa Speedway this weekend and will not let the fire impact their efforts going forward.  

David Pepper, General manager of ThorSport Racing, spoke to the media on Friday afternoon at Iowa Speedway on their plan going forward.

“It was a major, major setback. Like I said, we’re 72 hours out. We have a plan,” said Pepper. “We’re scattered across a couple of buildings in the community. The community really rallied behind us. Pegasus Trailer company (Pegasus Race Trailers) is letting us use about 40 percent of their shop. Another gentleman has offered up his race shop that’s down the street from there, so we’re putting some things in there – putting some surface plates in.”

The racing team is already making progress on getting their building back into working conditions with the removal of water and the addition of temporary lighting fixtures. “We’ve got the water out of the building, temporary lighting back up, we’re already starting the rebuilding and renovation process to try to clean up what happened,” added Pepper during the press conference. “Painting bodies at another location, so we’re kind of scattered all over Sandusky (Ohio) and a lot of people in the community have helped and the NASCAR community – just bringing us pieces and parts on multiple trailers here to get to this race – but we have a plan and we’re here. No one was hurt and we’re going to be racing.”

The well-known racing team went old school this week as they prepared for Saturday’s Speediatrics 200 at the short track located just outside of Newton, Iowa. NASCAR teams would use parking lots back in the day to prepare for each race weekend while out on the road. ThorSport Racing went back to those roots this week

“We’re kind of going old school like this week – we’re out working in a parking lot getting the trucks ready for Iowa,” Pepper went on to say. “We had people bringing us food – local establishments. Kind of went back to the late ‘90s of the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series when we used to work in parking lots at Sears stores, so for the old guard there at the race shop it was kind of a throwback and in some ways not that bad. Some of the young guys were pretty amazed that we used to build these things out in parking lots in between races out on the West Coast. We’re prepared.”

ThorSport Racing will field four Camping World Truck Series entries at Iowa Speedway this weekend with Matt Crafton, Ben Rhodes, Rico Abreu, and Cameron Hayley. Crafton, a veteran driver in the series, holds two victories already in 2016. The California native went to victory lane at Iowa Speedway back in 2011.

Brett Winningham
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