A few days have past and the reality has now fully set in, that my ’17 COPO Camaro is in pretty bad shape!

We began 2017 with a tremendous amount of confidence, debuting a brand new car with a 12 minute feature on the popular Velocity “how-to” show Car Fix and a Victory in its first battle the NMCA Muscle Car Mayhem in Bradenton, FL.

A switch to a new engine builder along with some rule changes threw us some curve balls, but after 37 dyno pulls and 2 months of R&D we felt we had the power to run at the front once again!  We headed to Bowling Green, KY to shakedown the new engine combo last Friday in preparation for the Chevrolet Performance US Nationals.  The new bullet made significant power and Indy is a special place for us, as in 2014 we were able to capture the First win for the COPO taking home the title at the 60th annual running of the event.

The very first test run, at about 250 feet out, a straight conservative run turned disastrous as something broke under the back side of the car sending it violently into the wall.  Upon impact I was briefly knocked unconscious, but was somehow able to keep it from crossing into the other lane and into my competitor.  The full extent of the damage is being discovered as I write this, the hope is that the frame didn’t getting twisted upon the impact.  Not sure on the time frame to get back up and running, but I can assure you that we might be down right now, but absolutely not out!  Case in point; after sitting out Friday’s qualifying session with my Cobalt, my first run back in a car was a career best run of 6.84 @ 200+ mph w/my turbocharged 4-cylinder!  We than went on to win rounds on Sunday, but a loss of traction in the quarter finals ended our day.

On a positive note; I’ve attached a feature story on my racing program that is currently running in Drag Racing Edge magazine.  I’ve also included a post mortem picture of my once beautiful COPO Camaro.  I’m not a big social media guy, but the image of this car and my accident has gotten a great deal of attention, with almost 38,000 hits on my Facebook page alone.

We currently are still very much in contention for another NHRA National and Divisional Championship in Competition Eliminator, if we can get lady luck back on our side, we just might get it done!

Thank you all for your support, I might need to lean on some of you to help us get this car back on track.

Best Wishes,

Bruno