Lagana crew comes to rescue of fellow racer
SAN ANTONIO, Texas (April 1, 2011) – Bobby Lagana Jr. and Mike McIntire have never met on the racetrack, but that didn’t stop Lagana from racing to McIntire’s side in his time of need.
Following last weekend’s Arizona Nitro Jam in Tucson, many of the top teams on the Nitro Jam tour began their trek back east to the San Antonio Nitro Jam this weekend in Texas. But while many of the teams made it to San Antonio Raceway earlier this week without a problem, McIntire and the “McAttack” Prostalgia Nitro Funny Car team weren’t so lucky.
Just a few miles across the Texas border in El Paso, McIntire’s race rig suffered a catastrophic failure and the team was left stranded still some 600 miles from their destination.
That is when Lagana and his race team stepped in.
Not knowing exactly who to call, McIntire called Top Fuel star Lagana who was already in San Antonio and asked for some advice. Not long after Lagana’s crewman Bob Szelag was on his way to El Paso to pick up McIntire’s race rig and bring it the nearly 18-hour trip back to San Antonio.
“It was an incredible act of kindness shown by the Lagana team. We didn’t really know what to do and they jumped to the rescue,” McIntire said. “Without hesitation they sent a truck all the way to El Paso to pick up the rig and then hauled it all the way back to the track. It just goes to show the caliber of people involved with Nitro Jam.”
McIntire, who had to fly back to Cleveland during the week and was not with the rig when it broke down, finally touched down in San Antonio on Thursday and found his rig there waiting for him – all because of the kindness shown by another race team.
“It was just natural. We saw another team in trouble and felt we had to do something,” Lagana said. “With the new Nitro Jam format it is all about family and putting on a show and we knew it was the right thing to do to help another race team and help the series. We would have done it for anybody.”
After an extremely long week, McIntire rolled his car out of the race rig for the first time Friday morning and is ready for a big weekend of racing this Friday and Saturday at San Antonio Raceway. Coming off of his career best weekend in Tucson last week, McIntire brings a ton of momentum into Texas looking for his first win of the season. The only problem lies in what happens when the race is finally over Saturday night.
“We aren’t really worrying about that right now, but we aren’t quite sure what the next move is,” McIntire said. “Hopefully we can erase some of this bad luck with a good weekend and then worry about how to get home later.”
