Season Starts in Flames for Joanides at Phoenix

  Nick Joanides and the Colorfast, Jackson Race Cars Monte Carlo had high hopes going into Phoenix. With a brand new car and a new Ed Hansen engine, they knew they would finally have the horsepower to be competitive. As can be the case with many new cars, the team was prepared to work out whatever bugs may have needed to be fixed. With tech inspection out of the way, Nick got on the track early and had just completed his first warm up lap when all the high hopes went down the drain as an oil line ruptured, pouring oil onto the headers causing the car to be a 150 MPH blazing inferno down the back straight. The car was completely engulfed in flames and unfortunately for Nick, the flames made it into the cockpit and found their way up the bottom of Nicks helmet and caused second degree burns to Nicks face and neck. Nick was able to get the car slowed down before it spun in it's own oil and came to a rest just past the dogleg.

Nick was taken by ambulance to the infield care center and treated for his burns. During the two hours he spent in the care center, the team work their tails off to repair the car for qualifying and they succeeded. Nick wrapped his neck and lower face with an ice cold head sock to help with the burning pain in the hot race car to get the car qualified. Nick knew that with no practice laps on a brand new car and having not seen the new layout of the track at Phoenix, that there was no chance of making the race on time, but planned to qualify to position himself in the Qualifying Race which transfers the top four finishers into the main event. Much to the surprise of Nick and team, Nick's second lap was just two tenths of second shy of the time needed to make the field and nearly a second faster than his first lap. He knows if he had one more lap, he would have easily made the race on time. "I was shocked to run that fast for never seeing the new track layout and this being a new car that has never seen a race track. It just shows how good this team really is!" said Nick.

Nick started the qualifying race in the 6th position and spent the first 10 laps just getting comfortable with the car and race track. After falling several car lengths behind, Nick quickly closed up on the 3rd, 4th and 5th place runners before the caution flew at lap 13. The race restarted with just two laps to go. On the re-start, Nick moved into the 5th position. As the white flag waved, Nick dove into turn one under the 4th place runner to take the position and moved into the transfer spot. As the leaders moved down the back straight, an accident on the front straight brought out the caution. As per NASCAR rules, when a caution flag is thrown after the white flag has been displayed, the cars are scored in the order they cross the start/finish line. Nick gained one additional position and crossed the line in third place. The team was excited that they accomplished what seemed impossible only a few hours earlier by earning a position in the main event. Nascar then decided to "make a judgment call" that the track was unsafe to race back to the line and indicated that they froze the field at the yellow flag which was displayed when the 1st through 8th place cars were on the back straight and Nick in the 4th position, therefore still able to transfer to the main. However due to this decision by Nascar officials to go against what the rule book indicates, they were unable to "freeze" the field when the yellow came out as they were confused to the running order when the yellow was displayed, so they chose to call the finishing order based on how the cars crossed the line at the white flag lap which left Nick out of the the transfer spot and out of the main event. Therefore the decision by Nascar not only broke the hearts of the team who had worked so hard to get the car ready after it sustained significant damage in the fire and the driver who suffered through a serious and painful burning feeling on his face inside a 130+ degree race car, it also prevented Nick and team from earning any significant points in the first race of the season in which Nick and the team had finally managed to secure a way to commit to run the entire season. "It's extremely disappointing, but this team and car is absolutely awesome and by far the best I've ever had in my career, so we'll just suck it up and move onto the next race at Madera in March. With as good as this team is, I know we are going to be tough to beat all year long, today just wasn't our day and the things that happened were beyond our control" Joanides commented.