Making the Best of It at his Home Track
By: Jim McConnell | jmcconnell@midlothianexchange.com
Sam Hunt’s debut at Richmond International Raceway was going to be difficult enough under optimal circumstances.
Having never raced on the ¾-mile oval prior to last Thursday’s NASCAR K&N Pro Series East Blue Ox 100, the James River High senior knew he lacked the experience to run up front and realistically challenge for the win.
His expectations were modest: keep the car in one piece and avoid doing something silly in front of a large group of friends and family.
Then a virus knocked Hunt off his feet, cost him four days of school last week and left him wondering whether he’d have the strength to race on his hometown track until he woke up feeling a little better Thursday morning.
“I was in bed all week, throwing up, and I couldn’t see very well,” Hunt recalled after his 25th-place finish. “It was in the back of my head that I might not be able to make it, but I thought I could suck it up for one day. I’ll probably fell terrible tomorrow.”
By the time the 36 Late Model stock cars rolled onto the track for their warmup laps at 6:45, Hunt’s problem was no longer the back of his head, but the front.
His nose started bleeding prior to the start of the race. Being otherwise occupied with turning laps at 130 mph and trying not to crash, Hunt didn’t have the luxury of putting his head back and stemming the flow of blood with constant pressure.
His only option was to suck it up and keep going … literally.
“I just had to drink blood the entire race,” Hunt said with a laugh.
As if feeling lousy and drowning in his own blood wasn’t bad enough, Hunt also found himself wrestling a “way too loose” No. 22 Dodge to prevent a high-speed interaction with the wall.
“I was loose in the wrong spots,” he added. “I passed a lot of cars on restarts, but once we got singled out, the car started sliding around and I couldn’t keep it on the bottom.”
Hunt, who has worked his way up through the Late Model ranks on the strength of his ability to race hard but smart, never threatened the leaders but did manage a couple significant accomplishments to build on from his initial RIR start.
First, while many of his compatriots seemed unable to complete a restart without wrecking – the 100-lap race was marred by 10 cautions – Hunt kept his ill-handling car out of trouble and picked up spots when the opportunity presented itself.
And while he finished more than five seconds behind winner Brett Moffitt, Hunt somehow ended the race as one of 27 drivers on the lead lap.
“These things aren’t free. If you wreck a bunch, you might not be able to race anymore,” Hunt said, pointing out with pride the relative absence of sheet metal damage on his red car. “You have to find the edge of what the car can do and get the best finish you can, even if it’s not what you want.”
Just three races into his first season in the Driver Development Program for Precision Performance Motorsports, a Yorktown-based race team, Hunt is soaking up information like a sponge and filing it away for the future.
For now, that’s enough.
“It’s definitely really cool, a dream come true,” he said of racing on the K&N Pro Series, a circuit that has launched the careers of such household names as Kevin Harvick and Martin Truex Jr. “I still have to keep everything in perspective and be thankful for the opportunity to do this. We’ll be better next time.”
