Highs and Lows at Indy

Returning to O’Reilly Raceway Park at Indianapolis, the Racing With Jesus team experienced both highs and lows with this week’s effort.

This is the track where Morgan Shepherd holds the record for most wins with 3 career victories.

A solid qualifying effort gained the #89 a 25th place starting spot.

For the first half of the race, Morgan was able to stay on the lead lap varying his position from 25th up to 22nd place.

With a caution in effect about midway through the race, he was able to gain some much-needed points by leading the field for 2 laps.

As the race resumed under the green flag, Morgan once again raced competitively in the top 25.

A serious lack of funding for the team once again proved to be the nemesis for this race.

The majority of the cars running in the Nationwide series incorporate an elaborate and expensive cooling system for the brakes whenever they race on short tracks like ORP. This is crucial as braking is heavy, with the temperatures of the brake discs reaching upwards of 1600 degrees.

Without this cooling system, it’s simply a matter of time before the brakes fail.

And fail they did.

Even with the brakes almost totally gone, Morgan was able to continue racing – running in the top 25.

Realizing that the potential for disaster was growing with each lap, Morgan chose to park the car early, settling for 37th position.

After staying on the track during the mid-race caution, Shepherd said he feared his continuing could have resulted in a wreck.

“Our brakes were gone and had been gone for a while so we did about all we could do with what we had.”

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You can follow the inspiring story of this team and read more about Morgan Shepherd and Racing with Jesus at the team’s website – www.racewithfaith.com. In addition to the team’s site, Jeff Parnell of KingdomWinners.com is writing a weekly blog of the team’s exploits at Christian Business Daily.

Read more of this inspiring story

….. to be continued…..