After a disappointing tenth place finish at Miller Motorsports Park last month, Justin Bell and the rest of the Tiger Racing team were looking forward to this week’s SCCA World Challenge race at Laguna Seca in Monterey, CA. Bell is very familiar with the track, having previously won a Trans-Am race there, and he would be racing with 70 less pounds of reward weight. In addition, Tiger Racing would be debuting their second Mustang Boss 302S driven by Dane Moxlow. Bell hoped to increase his lead in the GTS points standings and Moxlow was aiming to get valuable seat time in his new ride and bring the car home safely.
Unfortunately neither of those things happened. By the end of the race both Tiger Racing Mustangs were beat up and bruised, and both were brought back to the pits on the back of tow trucks. Moxlow’s Mustang undoubtedly looked the better of the two, with the damage being mostly cosmetic. Bell’s Boss Mustang 302S, however, looked like it had been hit by a wrecking ball.
While watching the car being unloaded back in the pits, Bell told us what led to the crash:
“At the restart we ended up with all these touring cars around us. I probably shouldn’t have been there, but it wasn’t really a problem. So coming down into [turn] 11 I didn’t want Cunningham and those guys to get away when I just had the chance to get close to them again. I was driving the heck out of the car even just to stay in fourth. I picked up a lot of rubber on my tires going down the inside, and when I went around the corner and put the gas on I had no grip. What hurt was that I got hit twice – I hit the wall and then I got hit by another car, so it was a double impact.”
We initially assumed that the damage to Bell’s Boss 302S was bad enough that it might be scrapped, but team owner Paul Brown told us that they would begin rebuilding the car as soon as they got it back to the shop. “We have to rebuild it,” he told us. “We have too much into the rest of the car.”
Below you can watch a video of the No. 50 Tiger Racing Mustang Boss 302S being unloaded off the tow truck and see detailed photos of both cars after their wrecks.
Photos © 2012 MustangsDaily.com