Several months ago I had a cool opportunity to be a part of a TV show! Gas Monkey Garage’s show “Fast N’ Loud” on Discovery, where they modify cool cars, had a project in which Long Road Racing did the chassis fabrication and roll cage design for a 1972 Pantera.
With the team at Charlotte Motor Speedway!
It was a neat collaboration with Kurt Busch, Inc., who was building the car for the show. Not only did Long Road Racing do the fabrication, but I was able to be involved with the shakedown and development of the Pantera!
This was a unique opportunity, and it was a lot of fun to work with Kurt Busch as well as his team, which is a very talented group of individuals. They were working under a pretty crazy TV timeline in order to get the finished product ready in time.
Driving the Pantera around Charlotte Motor Speedway was a rush! It had an incredible amount of horsepower thanks to the Ford Coyote engine that they installed and mated with a sequential gearbox. It was my first time driving the newly redesigned road course, which NASCAR will be utilizing in the Chase next fall. It was a really exhilarating ride!
For the grand finale, they had a competition between Ford drivers Kurt Busch and Joey Logano. Kurt was in the Pantera that they had built, while Joey drove a Factory Five Cobra. It was neat for me to not only help shakedown and fine-tune the car for when Kurt got there, but also to be able to communicate with Kurt to give him an overview of the car and bring him up to speed on the adjustments that we made.
When Kurt jumped in, it was showtime! Tune in tonight to find out how it went for him. Our episode of “Fast N’ Loud” airs on Discovery tonight, Nov. 20, at 8p.m. ET.