To the editor:

I would like to thank everyone who helped me to build my racecar this year.

First of all, I want to thank my wife for not divorcing me after six weeks of late nights at the garage. Thank you to Ty Ott for helping out the whole way; Martin Beckett for an all-nighter trying to finish the car; Tony Grajeda for some last-minute wrenching, as my first pit crew; Scott McKinney for lending me safety gear and advice; Paco Martin for sponsoring me with his trailer; H.D. Craig for finding my helmet and fire suit, which I bought from Justin Gallegos; W.A.R. Racing for lending me some breathers off their spare motor; the people at NAPA, Checker, Ikes and Round Bottom for helping me to fill long lists of parts; Donald at Jim’s Tire for mounting more tires than needed.

There are countless others who pitched in along the way, but there are a few who did more for me in six weeks than I could possibly imagine. Gregg Kolbaba and Samantha Johnston have been amazing throughout. Samantha loaned me her spare motor to try to get my car finished before the race two weeks ago. It blew me away that someone would lend their motor to a rookie who had never raced before and wanted to race in the same class. Finally, thank you to Gregg who opened up his shop to me and let me use anything I needed. He never let me cut corners, even when we were working until the wee hours of the morning to finish. He would explain to me over and over how something worked, and he didn’t yell when I welded his tools to the car. He built the motor, transmission and anything else that I needed help with. He put as much time into my car as I did.

While building the car, there were more than 500 things I did wrong. The one thing I did right was ask great people for help.

Thank you,

Matt Beckett — #14