That's a new one....

.....for me. Second round racing tonight, the dragster in the other lane narrowly missed hitting an armadillo in the shutdown area just after the traps. The critter made it to the centerline, and when the dragster blew by, the animal was scared into running into my lane.    Swerving at that speed seemed like a shitty idea so I quickly and without hesitation  ...opted for plan B (do nothing).

When I got to the e.t. shack, I told them to call the tower, tell them what happened and have the crew clear the carcass off the track. They later came by my pit to see if I had the animal. The crew said there was nothing to clean up, just a big red area on the track.

Apparently, when a racecar with 2" of ground clearance hits an armadillo at well above 100 mph, the result is similar to pitching a grapefruit to a major league batter. You get grapefruit juice.   And I broke my godammned bat, too....busted fiberglass on left front. Not a big deal, easy enough to fix.

So the track operator jokes and says, "A good driver would've missed that poor thing. By the way, the Humane Society is here. They want to talk to you." I said, "Just tell them that I don't think the armadillo suffered."  

Kim glad your ok an it do more damage than just a little fiberglass repair. Back woods track in the south never know what may run across them. I just turn left last night and was only moving about 25mph and a babby deer it still had spots on it run across the road in front of me. Hit the brakes to keep from hitting the little joker, for it to run across the road to turn around and run right back into my drivers door. It didn't hurt my door but talking about little sucker getting up and getting gone.

Damn that sucks! Your really lucky that's all it did, them sob's are tuff!

a few years bad a buddy of mine had a gopher "richardson ground squirrel " run out to the center of his lane and stand up , he hit it at 170 mph , the car " '80s camero " ended up with a perfect cutout of it in the nose !
Frank

Frank Merkl wrote:a few years bad a buddy of mine had a gopher "richardson ground squirrel " run out to the center of his lane and stand up , he hit it at 170 mph , the car " '80s camero " ended up with a perfect cutout of it in the nose !
Frank

That's cartoon stuff right there.  

Kim,i'm ashamed of you.   

 

bbf-falcon wrote:Kim,i'm ashamed of you.   

What did I do wrong??  This heap of mine ain't exactly made for cutting high speed corners.  

bbf-falcon wrote:Kim,i'm ashamed of you.   

Sounds like the critter picked the wrong track.  

We had some deer in the shutdown area last year, now that would leave a mark!!! ha ha

Not just people like drag racing lol...

Glad that didn't turn out worse. Similar thing happened to a friend of mine last year over at Lakeland.. He hit a possum, but his S-10 doesn't sit too low, so it didn't hurt anything..if that would've happened to me, the critter would have met the old bumper on the '48, might have flown up into the windshield.