If there was a noise when it happened, it was drowned out by burnouts. All we knew was that one car refused to burn out and the driver kept pointing to the black Dodge Challenger that was coasting slowly to the side of the groove in the left lane, trying to get off of the track but obviously unable to do so. The track guy who marshaled the burnouts saw it first, and was the first of what would be many people to utter “Holy ____!” when they saw the better part of said Challenger’s rear pumpkin laying on the ground. The black Dodge had looked deadly serious when it pulled into the lanes, from it’s Hellcat-swapped nose to it’s big-ass slicks out back, but in short order the first major breakage of ChallengerFest 7 had occurred and just to add salt to the wound, the driver had to do the walk of shame, carrying the chunk all the way back to the pits. He wasn’t the only one, by far: one drive axle, one ring-and-pinion, a smoked clutch that could’ve been smelled throughout the county courtesy of a hard-charging Hellcat driver, and one potentially killed engine were among the casualties at Beech Bend. But nothing compares to the stark reality of looking at your rear gears, twenty feet away from the car they should be in.
That is parts porn to anyone that has prepped or worked a starting line.