RELATED: Exclusive look at the ThorSport shop in Ohio
SANDUSKY, Ohio — No matter what happens from here on out, win or lose, championship or bust, ThorSport Racing officials likely will look back on the 2016 season as something of a rebirth.
It’s been a year in which the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series organization has literally risen from the ashes.
Cut short just seven races into the season by a raging fire that damaged much of the team’s race shop, the company marched on, spent weeks working piecemeal out of everything from the parking lot of a former grocery store to a section of bays inside a custom trailer manufacturing facility.
Each off-site venue was within roughly a five-mile radius of the team’s 100,000-square-foot home base. Each was also an example of a small, tight-knit community reaching out to help in any way possible.
ThorSport, owned by Duke and Rhonda Thorson, has fielded entries in the Camping World Truck Series since 1996, the second year of the series’ existence. Today, four teams run out of the large cream-colored building — the No. 88 Toyota Tundra of two-time series champion Matt Crafton, the No. 13 of Cameron Hayley, the No. 41 of Ben Rhodes and the No. 98 of Rico Abreu. Rhodes and Abreu are Sunoco Rookie of the Year candidates.
But for six weeks, the four teams and approximately 85 employees worked “old school,” minus many of the technological necessities prevalent throughout all three of NASCAR’s national series. They did so while traveling to and competing at Iowa and St. Louis, Kentucky and Eldora.
Walk into the shop today and you might not realize the place had been filled with smoke “so thick you couldn’t see your hand in front of your face,” one first responder recalled on Thursday, or that water was “up to our knees in most places, and running out of the hauler bays in back like a river,” said another.
But the smell tells another story.
“There were times,” said Jim Johnson, captain of the Perkins Township Fire Department, “I thought we were going to lose the entire building.”
Johnson was the first to arrive on the scene, just after midnight on Monday, June 13. Assuming it was nothing more than a small brush fire out back of the team’s headquarters, he said he quickly realized the severity of the situation and alerted departments from nearby townships as well as Sandusky. Three other localities and 47 firefighters quickly responded.
The fire, which began outside behind the main building, had spread up the rear wall and then began moving beneath the rubber-sealed roof.
The rear portion, which housed a fabrication area and machine shop, had to be knocked down in order for firemen to get to the blaze. Johnson said it took approximately 500,000 gallons of water to finally extinguish the fire.
Most equipment was quickly removed from the shop — a large grassy area outside was soon filled with race trucks, pit boxes and assorted tools.
There were no injuries and, surprisingly, no race vehicles were damaged to the extent that they had to be discarded.
While ThorSport teams regrouped and continued to focus on racing, workers began the process of renovating the shop. Walls, blackened by smoke and damaged by water, were torn down to the studs and rebuilt. New wiring was installed. Eventually, equipment was brought back in. And what little remained of the destroyed rear portion, about 25,000 square feet of shop space, was hauled away.
The organization was slowed, perhaps, but not stopped.
“We can’t use (the fire) as an excuse to under-achieve,” ThorSport General Manager David Pepper said.
Today, trucks in various states of assembly sit on the pristine shop floor. Work has resumed in a building, a former slaughterhouse that was first put into use by the group in 2011.
“Duke and Rhonda have given us our biggest, best resource you could possibly ask for to win races, and we’ve proven we can do that from here,” Carl “Junior” Joiner, crew chief for Crafton, said. “Not having it, you were lost.
“At this level, you need resources like this to win and we didn’t have that for a long time.”
The smell, less strong now, still lingers inside the shop. Inside some of the trucks, too.
“We still have to put air fresheners in some of them because of the stench,” he said.
It is not only a reminder of what happened, but how far the organization has come in such a short period of time.
“When something bad happens, my father always told me, ‘Well kid, it builds character.’ And I know that we’re going to be stronger from it,” Joiner said. “I know we will.”