It’s been quite a season for the ever popular “Turbo Todd” Moyer and crew, and looking back, an eventful last couple of seasons in both a good and bad way. Last season kicked off with a bang, as a top end accident destroyed their turbocharged Camaro, sending the team on a two-week thrash to locate a replacement car and getting it race-ready. In March of this year, all of their hard work paid off as Todd cranked off his first three-second lap in testing and followed it up with an official “three” at the ADRL season opener in Houston to join the Mickey Thompson 3-Second Club. Moyer then scored his first ADRL Extreme 10.5 win at the next event at South Georgia Motorsports Park, and carried that momentum throughout the season to earn a berth in the championship-deciding Battle For The Belts in the fifth points position.

However, just days away from the kickoff of the final event in Dallas, Moyer and crew experienced another setback, encountering a nasty fire on a test pass Sunday afternoon at the Tulsa Raceway Park in preparation for this weekend’s event. In Moyer’s words, the car is now “in 2,000 pieces,” and the crew is working feverishly to get it back together in time.

“Something like this checks you to see how good you really are,” Moyer said. “This checks us to see how good of a team we are. Can we put this together and go down the track or are we going to struggle? Something like this will answer how good myself and the team are.”

The team has been working until 11PM each night this week, and if all goes to plan, they hope to arrive at the Texas Motorplex on Friday morning.

“We might make it (to Ennis) on Thursday, but it’s probably going to be Friday morning,” Moyer said. “Right now, it’s in 2,000 pieces, but everybody is working on it. I think we’re going to make it, but it’s going to be a last-minute deal. It’s driving me crazy because you’re fixing something and you find more problems. When you fire up a car that’s been in 2,000 pieces, if everything doesn’t go right, you’re going to be in trouble, but I think we’ll make it.”

It was determined that an intake push rod broke, causing the fire that burned up nearly everything in the car, including all of the wiring.

“It was like a chain reaction,” Moyer said. “The fire got a little wild. I almost thought the car was gone.”

Moyer will face fellow Texan Jeff Naiser in the opening round of the Extreme 10.5 Battle For The Belts as part of the LenMar Motorsports ADRL World Finals VI in Dallas on Friday evening. Interestingly, it is Naiser who is performing repairs on Moyer’s damaged engine this week.