James has been Dale's co-pilot for the last 3 years. He was signed up for the last two years with his 70 Challenger (my old race car). After not finishing the car last year, Dale vowed it would make it in 2016, and had basically been ignoring his Gremlin over the last few months. From an outsider's view they seem to be stuck in a constant cycle of "we need to upgrade that" on nearly every component of the car, and that has bogged down any real progress.
With less than a month to go, James hurt his back at work...once he was on worker's comp, and under a doctor's care, they informed him that he wouldn't be allowed to take his vacation that he scheduled six months earlier. He rushed himself back with just two weeks to go, but re-aggravated the injury on his third day back, and was out. He implored Dale to finish the Challenger and take it without him, but Dale declined, so both the Challenger and James were sidelined for Drag Week 2016.
"Livin' in a powder keg and givin' off sparks"
4 Street cars, 5 Race engines
