Mason Mingus nearly pulled off an unbelievable

comeback in one of the nation’s most

prestigious races, the Winchester 400.  After

going down several laps when a flat tire

plagued his 811 “Call Before You Dig”

Chevrolet, Mingus drove his heart out and

made up several laps to finally be scored on

the same lap as the leaders in the final stages

of the event.  Unfortunately, just 34-laps from

the checkers in Sunday’s 400-lap marathon at

Winchester Speedway (IN), a part failure

would force the 16-year-old to make that

dreaded hard right hand turn into the outside

wall as he entered the corner.

“We had to make up a couple laps at one

point,” said Mingus.  “We had a right rear tire

go down and that wore out all of our other tires.  We ran all of our rear tires down to the cords and went a couple laps down.  We came back from it thought.  We put tires on (earlier than expected) because we thought it was going to rain.  We were going for it there.  Then I went off into the corner and I think something broke;  the car just shot straight up towards the wall.

“It tore it up quite a bit,” added Mingus.  “It was pretty much past the fixing-point  to get it back on the racetrack and we were out of the points battles anyway so we just parked it.”

With disappointment in the Winchester 400 in the rearview mirror, Mingus will now look ahead to the biggest short track race of the year – the Snowball Derby at Five Flags Speedway in Pensacola, Florida during the first weekend in December.

“We going to try to move past this,” said Mingus.  “We’re going to get the car fixed and hopefully go down to the Snowball Derby.”

811 Car Takes a Beating on Tough Winchester High-Banks  Parts Failure Gobbles Up a Hard-Fought Battle in Winchester 400

Mingus had a strong run going in the Winchester 400 before a mechanical failure ended his day prematurely. (Speed51.com Photo)