Some Thieves Jacked A $250,000 NASCAR Race Car From A Hotel Parking Lot

NASCAR Sprint Cup driver Travis Kvapil has been forced to withdraw from the Atlanta race this weekend after his #44 Sprint Cup race car was stolen from his team’s hotel in Morrow, Georgia.

The #44 NASCAR Sprint Cup race car sponsored by Golden Corral was inside an unmarked white Sunbeam trailer at a hotel in Morrow, GA where Travis Kvapil and his ‘Team Xtreme’ crew members were staying prior to the race.

For those of you that couldn’t care less about NASCAR it might shock you to know that here in America NASCAR is the #1 spectator sport with 75 MILLION fans, so this is actually kind of a big deal. Travis Kvapil and the #44 ‘Team Xtreme’ crew have already pulled out of this weekend’s race in Atlanta, but have announced they plan to race next weekend in Las Vegas.

How these thieves plan to hide their stolen NASCAR Sprint Cup race car is beyond me, but I’m pretty damn curious to see how all this plays out.

AutoWeek reports:

It’s hard to say who was more surprised Friday morning, NASCAR driver Travis Kvapil, or whoever stole his No. 44 Sprint Cup car.

According to USA Today, Kvapil’s Team Xtreme car was stolen from a parking lot outside of the team’s hotel in Morrow, Ga.
The car was inside an unmarked white Sunbeam trailer being pulled by a 2004 Ford F-350.

“Sometimes what happens when thieves see trailers, they might just assume there’s something in the trailer they can go off and sell,” Morrow Police Sgt. Larry Oglesby told USA Today. “Sometimes when things like this occur, they will drop off the items in a parking lot somewhere — like a Walmart parking lot — once they realize what they have.

“They’ll open it up and say, ‘Oh my God, this is not what we thought it was. Let’s get out of here.’ And they’ll take off and leave it sitting there. We’re hoping that will be the situation so (Kvapil) can get back to his races this weekend, because they drove quite a distance to participate.”

According to the police report, the car is valued at $250,000. A backup engine in the trailer is valued at $100,000 and there was $17,500 worth of other tools and equipment in the trailer as well.

Kvapil didn’t compete in last weekend’s Daytona 500 (Reed Sorenson drove the No. 44 and finished 32nd), but he did finish 15th in the Camping World Truck Series race.

That GIF above basically describes Travis Kvapil’s start to the 2015 NASCAR Sprint Cup season. A colossal fuck up thus far.

I can’t even begin to imagine the size of the shit these thieves took in their pants when they discovered they’d jacked a NASCAR Sprint Cup race car.

Presumably they saw a trailer and thought to themselves: ‘I bet there’s shit in there we can sell for parts.’ And there very well might be, if they have the ability to disassemble a NASCAR Sprint Cup race car, and strip it for parts, and grab everything in the trailer that wasn’t branded with the #44 car’s sponsors. Which I imagine wouldn’t be a whole lot of merchandise, because EVERYTHING in NASCAR is branded.

The absolute BEST CASE SCENARIO for these thieves is they were able to grab everything they could carry and toss it into the back of whatever truck they were driving and can sell memorabilia on Ebay.

[Autoweek via USA Today]