We had the chassis checked for any damage which may have occurred from our Toronto mishap.

After stripping the car clean, Neil, Randy and Jordan looked the chassis over very carefully and couldn't find anything out of the ordinary. We put the chassis on a jig, just to be sure. Here are some pictures from Keith Falconer's garage, all looks good to go!

ESP Racing made it's way to I.H.R.A.'s 6th Annual Race at Toronoto Motorsports Park in Cayuga, ON. Needless to say coming from Alberta where it is so dry the humidity was something else. Friday nights qualifying pass started approximately 7:00 pm and the first two pair of Nitro Funny Cars were the two from Alberta. Randy had the right lane and Jason Duchene in the left. Randy ran a 5.613 but at the 1000 foot mark banged the blower and coasted through at 225.63 m.p.h. With only two funny cars left for round one qualifying, it started to rain hard postponing the first qualifying round for the last two cars until the next morning. After all cars made their first qualifying round, Randy was qualified 7th.

Saturday afternoon's qualifying session, Randy was in the left lane. He left the line hard but shortly after the car went up in tire smoke, the car veered to the left and as he tried to straighten out, the car smacked the retaining wall really hard. They took him to a local hospital, Haggersville Hospital, where they did some x-rays and examined him. X-rays showed he had a couple fractured ribs and a collapsed lung so they inserted a tube into his side to drain the blood and fluid around the lung. He was put on oxygen and an I.V. and he was transfeered to the Trauma Unit at the Hamilton General. The Trauma team examined him and took more x-rays and CT Scan of his chest and confirmed that the force of the impact alone collapsed his lung. He was in very good hands with the doctors in the Trauma Unit.

I am so impressed by professionalism of the I.H.R.A. Safety Safari and how they took care of Randy. As well as their doctor explaining and preparing me step by step as to what could possibly happen. I can't say enough about Sharon Ramlow from I.H.R.A and Renee Bingham of God Speed for the time they spent comforting and reassuring me. Thank you for the emails you both sent to us. I would also like to give a very big thank you to my Uncle Neilan MacDonald for all the support and endless drives to and from the hopital. Thank you to those that visited him and those that called or sent cards. Randy was released from the hospital and we took the train home from Toronto Saturday the 15th and arrived in Edmonton, Monday morning at 11:30 am. Randy was reevaluated by his own doctor on Wednesday with another CT Scan done on his chest and everything is healing. He will have another check up next week.

ESP Racing would like to send a special thank you to Peter Schak, Temp Mizer Canada, for sponsoring the Hi-Velocity Systems, Nitro Funny Car for the 6th Annual Canadian Nationals.

Friday evening's qualifying session was our fist ever qualifying pass at a National Event, and the team was pretty pumped. Randy was the first car out and ran a 5.98 @ 237 mph. which qualified him #8 at the end of the evening.

Neil Fedderly, Crew Chief, decided not to run the car in Saturday afternoon's session and to save it for Saturday night's session. When it was all said and done the run Randy made Friday night stood and we were still qualified #8 and were in the show for Sunday. The team couldn't ask for anything more. We had surpassed all of our expectations for the weekend.

Sunday morning we discovered we had a problem with our blower and probably couldn't make it first round of eliminations. We told the IHRA staff that we were finished. Word spread fast that we were finished and being the big family that drag racers are, people were coming to us to offer their help. Terry Haddock, offered the team his blower, however it would have taken us too long to do the change over. Jason DuChene, the Castrol Racing sponsored Nitro Funny Car heard of the bad news and him and his entire team jumped right in and gave us their manifold, blower and hat. They also helped thrash on the car so we could make it for round 1 of eliminations, which we did thanks to everyone.

Leon Prevost, owner, also sponsored Terry Haddock that weekend. The two cars met in the 1st round of eliminations. After Randy's burnout, Neil signaled Randy to shut the car down; we had problems and couldn't make the run. Terry staged the car and it was an easy win for him in round 1. However, Terry went on to win his first national event ever.....The Rocky Mountain Nationals…..congratulations to Terry!

We would like to thank Jason DuChene and team for helping us get to the starting line. Randy would also like to pass on a very big thank you to his team for all their hard work prior to and during the Rocky Mountain Nationals. Great Job! Pictures to follow soon.

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