When rising costs forced many NASCAR Busch Series teams to shut down, Ashton Lewis Jr. and Lewis Motorsports held on and raced without sponsors. Now in 2002, Lewis Motorsports has a primary sponsor, and that has given the team the boost it needs to prove it belongs in the big leagues.
What a difference a year makes. For the first time in our three-year existence, Lewis Motorsports started a new season with the security of knowing we will race all season long. Over the winter we signed a three-year contract with the Civil Air Patrol to be our primary sponsor.
I am so excited to have this opportunity to work with the Civil Air Patrol. It is an unbelievable organization. It has roughly 58,000 members whose sole purpose is to protect and support our nation. CAP performs search and rescue missions for the U.S. Air Force and has a cadet program and aerospace education.
During the weekend of the Daytona 500, several of the CAP members, who were attending the Busch race, had to leave to help locate a downed helicopter that had crashed in route to pick up car owner Joe Gibbs.
Civil Air Patrol has supported our nation with little recognition over the last 60 years. With its involvement in the NASCAR Busch Series, we look forward to giving it the opportunity to gain the recognition it deserves.
With the CAP sponsorship, we have been able to make several additions to our race team. The first thing we invested in was people. One of the biggest keys to our success over the past three years is our core group of guys. Scott Honan, Tab Boyd, Jim Jenkins, Bradley Sutton and Brian "Tailgate" Dancy have dedicated so much of their time and effort to make this team a success. However, for us to step up to the next level we needed to hire additional people.
The first position we needed to fill was a shop foreman/car chief. The only person we wanted for this job was Butch Lamoreux. Butch brings a lot of experience and knowledge to our team and we are very excited to have him. The next position was a fab shop foreman. Again, we were very fortunate to get the one person we wanted. Roger Sawyer has several years of experience working in Winston Cup team fab shops. I, along with my brother Charlie, worked with Roger in the Late Model series, therefore making him the perfect match.
We also hired Jason Stockert, a recent mechanical engineering graduate from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, to lift the shock building and data acquisition work from my shoulders. Another big boost for our team came when Mark Connolly decided to join us. With the addition of Mark, we are now capable of hanging championship winning bodies in house. The last person we hired for our 2002 assault is Jamie Turski. Every team needs someone like Jamie. His work ethic is inspiring to the entire organization and me.
The next addition we needed to make was in some new equipment. We built a new superspeedway car for Daytona, as well as a new car for the first race in Richmond. The team tested in Daytona, Talladega and Rockingham, and spent two days in the Old Dominion University wind tunnel. All of the additional testing and personnel should make us better prepared for the 2002 Busch season.
Everyone at Lewis Motorsports feels very fortunate to be given this opportunity for the next three years. There is no doubt in our minds that we are going to have numerous chances to win races in 2002. So, please look for the red, white, and blue Civil Air Patrol Chevrolet in Victory Lane.