Playa Del Racing went to the Nashville Superspeedway with high hopes and plenty of momentum following consecutive 4th place finishes in the last two races. The “little team that could” left Nashville with a race car that was destroyed in a mid-race crash.

The weekend started very similar to that of the Iowa race last month. Al Unser III was behind the wheel and could not get comfortable with the car throughout the first two practice sessions prior to qualifying, but changes to the car improved its speed and handling in the final practice.

“We struggled with the car the whole first day,” said Unser. “The front of the car was pushing to the wall and the back of the car was loose. Nashville is a tough track to tame, but we were really started to get a handle on the thing by the final warm up when we were 9th quick.”

Unser started the race in his usual fashion by climbing four positions at the drop of the green flag. A crash in turn four forced Unser to dive into pit lane to avoid other cars and debris on the track. The incredible save and trip down pit lane cause Unser to fall in line under yellow flag conditions behind the cars he had passed prior to the yellow flag being thrown.  It was unfortunate for the Playa Del Racing team that the race control team failed to recognize that Unser was ahead of those cars, and another one as well, and refused to all him to  return to his rightful position following the yellow flag.

“We had a great start out there and I really thought I made the right move avoiding the crash, but I was forced to the back of the pack when we got the no-call from race control,” said Unser. “That pretty much ended the day for us because I couldn’t get past the slower traffic with all the marbles up high. I basically just had to get out of the way and let everybody else race.

With only 15 laps to go Unser moved to the high side in turn 3 to allow faster traffic by when contact was made by car No.3  (driven by Brad Jaiger) sending Unser and the Playa Del Racing/Ethos Fuel Reformulator machine into the wall. The contact ended the day for both drivers and destroyed Playa Del Racing’s race car.

“This was just a disappointing weekend for all of us,” said Gary Sallee, co-owner of PDR. “Al had a great start, but,  because of a poor call by race control, ended up in the back of the line following a first-lap yellow flag. He was doing a great job of staying out of the way, and, unfortunately we ended up in the wall. Al’s a great guy, and a great driver. We’re going to make sure we get him back out there.”

Unser escaped injury after the fiery crash, but the young driver left with frustrations from the weekend and hopes for better races to come.

“It’s so frustrating when you don’t bring the car back home in one piece. I can’t thank the guys enough for just putting me in the car. Hopefully we can get back out there and put some results together that really show what we are capable of at Playa Del Racing,” said Unser.