3 Doors Down… Superman Meets Kryptonite

In successive qualifying rounds, the Lethal Threat ’58 Corvette of Brandon Pesz, the current ‘Superman’ of the XDRL’s Pro X-Treme class, met his ‘kryptonite’. For reasons unknown to the team, the driver’s door blew off at speed during Friday’s second qualifying round. While the door skin and the structure below it parted ways, a few sharp-eyed fans were polled to locate the door lock rod, the one part required to hold the door closed. Blown into the grass alongside the racing surface, it would prove to be the integral piece needed and the one that would require many of hours of fabrication if it could not be found.

The third and final qualifying round of the evening saw Pesz’s Corvette appearing to be all together once again, minus only the portion of the vinyl wrap on the door. A lengthy delay to clear the track from the blow over of Top Dragster driver Dan Phelps occurred prior to the qualifying sessions for the Pro class cars. While Phelps himself apparently was not injured in the accident, the same could not be said for his 2013 RaceTech dragster. Not until well after 11 p.m. was the ‘all clear’ signal given, and qualifying resumed.

At 11:38 p.m., on pace to run a 3.64 or 3.65, Pesz’s Corvette ran strong, recording a 3.62 @ 208.91 mph when the blower belt let go and about the same time the replacement door went airborne too. While a highlight reel moment, the loss of another door left Lethal Threat team owner Todd Martin with a dilemma – where to find another?

Martin stated, “We got lucky; Jeffers recalled having a display door someplace, and with their shop in the area, it was only a matter of locating it.” Apparently they did, as someone was dispatched to pick up the fiberglass display model, and work began to make it fit the Corvette sometime after 1:30 a.m.

With dawn came the third driver’s door, hence the third door down designation by Martin, or as another observer asked, “What’s behind door number three?” We’ll have to wait to see if the Corvette’s transplant is successful this time or not.