Friday, March 11, 2011

Trials & Tribulations of a Rookie

John Lobb knew his pursuit of the 2011 World of Outlaws Late Model Series Rookie of the Year award would be a challenge. He just didn’t expect it to be so trying, so soon.

As if failing to qualify for a single feature – including the pair of season-opening WoO LMS events – during last month’s DIRTcar Nationals by UNOH at Volusia Speedway Park in Barberville, Fla., wasn’t disappointing enough for Lobb, the 41-year-old first-time traveler ran into major trouble on the final leg of his long trip home to Frewsburg, N.Y. In the early morning hours of Feb. 22 his team’s hauler and trailer were seriously damaged in an icy highway accident.

Around 3 a.m. Lobb was sleeping in a back bunk as his car owner John Kennedy’s father drove the rig north on Interstate 79 near Grove City, Pa. (not far from Tri-City Speedway in Franklin, Pa.). Lobb was awakened abruptly, however, when the hauler began sliding out of control after Kennedy hit a patch of black ice. The Freightliner truck and race car trailer both flipped over – tossing Lobb around in the process – before the single-vehicle crash ended with the hauler on its wheels and the trailer lying on its side in the middle of the highway.

“We were driving into a snowstorm but it was still raining where we were,” said Lobb, who was just over two hours away from his residence at the time of the wreck. “There was some black ice, though, and when John’s dad hit it the trailer came around and hit the truck. We were just along for the ride at that point.”

Fortunately, neither Lobb nor Kennedy – the only people in the truck – were injured. The Kennedy Motorsports transporter, however, did not emerge from the ordeal in good shape. They were able to nurse the damaged hauler back to Lobb’s shop but it was determined that it needed to be replaced; the trailer was emptied of its contents (dirt Late Model driver Mike Knight returned to the scene with his rig to help Lobb transport the equipment back to New York) and was taken to a yard in Mercer, Pa., where it remains.

“The race cars (two Rockets in the trailer) were O.K., but we destroyed a lot of other (racing) equipment in the crash,” said Lobb. “We found a lot of broken shocks, our spare rearend broke and we lost a lot of little things and tools. I think some of the smaller things might still be in the median (of the highway).”

The disaster won’t stop Lobb and his Kennedy Motorsports operation from continuing on with their plans to follow the WoO LMS this season. Going through the insurance-collection process has taken plenty of time, but Kennedy was able to purchase a used toter home and stacker trailer locally from Rueben Schwartz, who owns dirt Late Models driven by Dennis Lunger, and Lobb is scheduled to pick it up on Monday. Lobb will then hastily stock the new trailer, load up his race cars and, hopefully by Wednesday, head out for the next WoO LMS event, the ‘Cash Cow 100’ scheduled for March 18-19 at Columbus (Miss.) Speedway.

“This definitely isn’t the way we wanted to start out the year,” said Lobb, a veteran racer at tracks in the western Pennsylvania area who is tackling the WoO LMS after landing a well-funded ride late last season with John Kennedy, Lobb’s crew chief during the ‘90s before relocating to his current home in Phoenix, Ariz. “We already figured it would take us six months to really have everything organized to do this deal. Now it’ll be even tougher for us, but we’re not giving up.”

1 comment:

  1. This is so sad. You people must be in big trouble. The trailer must be of high cost.


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