Thursday night. Round 6 of the Toyota GR Cup North America season, second practice session of the weekend at Road America. A fuel line lets go on the No. 22 Toyota GR86 Cup car. Now the engine bay is on fire.
Forty-five seconds. That’s how long the flames had the car. Jeremy Fletcher immediately got everything shut down and out safely. Nobody hurt. But when the car rolled back to the paddock, the damage told its own story. Wiring harness torched. ABS lines melted. Everything was cooked.
Good news: the chassis was still good.
First move was simple. Put Jeremy in teammate Beltre Curtis’s backup car and figure the rest out later. Jeremy climbed in and drove it like he’d been in it all season. Then, more bad luck as Beltre had an unfortunate incident with his primary car and needed the backup back, which put Jeremy right back where he started: no car, no ride, one day before qualifying at Road America.
So the crew did what this crew does. They went to the bar, had a drink, and started asking the only question that mattered:
What if we fixed it?
One call to Toyota changed everything. Early the next morning the burned car was stripped down to nothing, wiring harness, motor, hood, ABS pump, all of it laid out on the ground. Someone remembered the motor sitting in Beltre’s wrecked car. Talked to Curtis. Pulled it. Dropped it in. If only it was that easy.
Twenty-four hours straight. No sleep. A GR86 Cup car that was a smoking shell on Thursday was buttoned up and rolling to qualifying with zero practice laps to shake it down.
Race one started in the rain. Jeremy won it anyway. Next day. Race two. Yup, he did it again.
That’s a sweep at Road America, built by a crew that rebuilt a torched race car overnight and sent it out to win both ends of a weekend. And they weren’t done. Beltre Curtis encountered damage, the crew fixed that one as well, and he came away with a Hard Charger Award. Two cars rebuilt, one weekend, one crew that refused to rest.
“Anybody can win with a good car. It takes a different kind of team to have one burn down on Thursday and win with it on Saturday AND Sunday.” – Dean Copeland
Copeland Motorsports walked into Road America 48 points out of the Toyota GR Cup North America championship lead, nearly two full races back. They walked out 13 points back.
That’s not luck. That’s a team that doesn’t quit when the car’s on fire, doesn’t quit when the backup gets wrecked too, and doesn’t quit until the checkered flag says otherwise.
Four races left. It’s on.
