NASCAR Cup Series Team Had Their $500,000 Car Unbelievably Stolen Hours Before a Race This Past Decade

Sometimes, NASCAR fans did some crazy stunts, which mostly happened in the 80s and 90s. For example, there was one scene where a drunk fan stole the pace car and took it for a joyride at Talladega. However, somebody went a step further and stole an actual NASCAR stock car, including the trailer.

The unfortunate victim was the Team Extreme organisation during the 2015 season. John Cohen founded Team Extreme all the way back in 2012 and the team ran sporadically in the Cup arena. During the three-year tenure before 2015, the team competed in 14 starts, going through at least four drivers. The drivers were, David Reutimann, Scott Riggs, Timmy Hill and JJ Yeley, and they were not particularly successful.

Deep into the 2015 season, Travis Kvapil was supposed to take over driving duties at Atlanta. Ahead of the race weekend, the team sent the transporter early, because they were anticipating a snowstorm in Charlotte. With extra time to prepare the car, they took advantage and soon loaded it onto a white trailer, ready for transport.

WATCH: When a Fan Stole a Car and Ran Laps Around Talladega Superspeedway

What happened to the NASCAR team on that day?

According to Kvapil, the team finished their preparations and drove it to the hotel, arriving at 11:30 at night. At around 5:40 AM, they went to warm up the truck and discovered that the trailer was gone. Hotel CCTV footage revealed that the truck and trailer were stolen around 5:34 AM, so the team were a few minutes too late.

What made things even worse was the fact that there was a crewman outside. He was taking a smoke break, a mere few minutes before the theft took place. In all, it was the literal worst-case scenario, as a car costing nearly $300,000 went missing, along with an engine and spare parts. Naturally, everyone was stunned that someone had the audacity to steal a NASCAR car. There was no backup car, so they were forced to withdraw from the race.

Then, in a cruel twist, the car was found once again, a mere 24 hours later. However, it was just the car, while the trailer and spare parts, were still at large. In the end, this incident seemingly marked the team’s death knell, because they didn’t race at all for the rest of the season.

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