Inside Parsons & Alpha Prime’s Wild Bristol Experience

BRISTOL, Tenn. – As the NASCAR Xfinity Series field took the green flag to begin Friday night’s Food City 300, a notable entry was still in the garage.

Yet when all was said and done, Stefan Parsons and Alpha Prime Racing’s journey through the race at Bristol Motor Speedway was one of unwavering – and, perhaps, even stubborn – perseverance.

Parsons reunited with Alpha Prime Racing for a one-off race at The Last Great Colosseum after his brilliant top-10 run in 2022 with the team. The No. 45 TruShine Car Wash Chevrolet Camaro was the fastest of the three Alpha Prime Racing cars in qualifying, placing 23rd on the speed charts.

But Parsons would not line up there on the grid.

After qualifying was over, the team found an issue with the motor in Parsons’ car. They attempted to remedy it quickly, but they soon realized it was more dire than it appeared, necessitating a full engine change before the green flag.

The scenario was one that would have challenged even the series’ best organizations, but for a non-Cup Series affiliated operation, the task facing Alpha Prime seemed even more daunting.

However, in a remarkable period of just one hour and 27 minutes, the Alpha Prime Racing crew – with help from personnel with ECR [Earnhardt Childress Racing] Engines – replaced the motor in the No. 45 and was able to get Parsons on track just 14 laps into the race.

The lap deficit derailed any hope of a decent finish for Parsons, but he fought to the end with the speed and circumstances he had available.

“I was just bummed that we didn’t get a chance to show what this car had. I felt like we had a top-20 car based [on] lap times.” said Parsons after the race. “It sucks, but I mean, it’s a freak thing that wasn’t anybody’s fault. ECR did an awesome job helping us change the motor. For us to get it changed as quick[ly] as we did is pretty impressive.

“Everybody at Alpha Prime worked really hard to get the job done.”

Even after the engine woes were solved, however, the drama was far from over for the team.

“We broke a left rear shock with probably 30 to go and limped it around … and then the last lap, something catastrophic happened that we barely got to the finish line. I got down underneath the car after the race, and both [rear shocks] were broken,” Parsons explained. “The last few laps were really interesting, but nonetheless, just a really good job by this team and [crew chief] Kase Kallenbach. They brought a good car; it’s just a shame that we didn’t get to really put it up where it belonged.

“We weren’t going to give up on it, though.”

Team co-owner and president Tommy Joe Martins went into more detail about the issue that caused the motor change after having time to better evaluate the situation.

“Apparently the motor was leaking water in the oil; they call it getting hydro-locked, so apparently there was a water leak in there somewhere and it kind of got into the oil mixture, so we couldn’t get the car started up. Once we were able to get it started up, we thought we were able to seal the leak,” Martins described. “It's not that weird to kind of have a pinhole leak somewhere and maybe get a little bit of water in the mixture and be able to sort it out, but apparently it had really done it a lot. It’s just really surprising.”

The team aspect was very real for all of Alpha Prime Racing, as members of both Ryan Ellis’ No. 43 and Brennan Poole’s No. 44 teams all jumped in to assist in getting everything done.

“It just showed me a lot more about the guys that work here and the guys from ECR. They didn’t have to come help us; they’ve got their own cars to work on, but the guys from the [Nos.] 43 and 44, they stayed right there until the driver had to get bolted into the car. It shows me that there is still a lot of team camaraderie, because you hear a lot of times of people not having that on bigger teams.

The feat accomplished by Martins and the team was not lost on him, either.

“We’re not a big team, but we’re not a small team. It really showed me we could do this anytime,” Martins said. “It doesn’t matter if it's 10 minutes before the race or 3 hours before the race, we can always do the job.

“For that car to run all the laps today and finish [the] race… if you would have asked me right before the race, I would have been really surprised by it. Really just proud of that, proud of the speed that that car had when it was up and running, but I’m really disappointed at the way everything shook out,” he admitted. “Having Stefan here for a one-race deal and knowing how fast he is around this place – a place we’ve gotten a top 10 before – to not really have a chance at it, I hate that.

“I know everybody’s really bummed out, but I’m still really proud of how all our teams worked together and how we were able to overcome the adversity and at least get to the checkered flag.”

Even with the amazing effort, Martins was still critical of himself and how he believes he could have done things differently.

“Honestly if anything, I’m probably a little mad at myself for not making a call sooner … because crew chief Kase Kallenbach called me right away and said, ‘Hey, we might have a problem with the motor.’ We were able to get some of the ECR guys over [to help]. Eric Davis does an awesome job at track for ECR. He was able to diagnose it … and at that point it was really our call whether we wanted to swap a motor or see if we could get it running,” Martins reflected.

“The first [thought] was ‘we [don’t] have enough time to swap the motor,’ and so we tried to get it going. We were able to get it running and then, all of a sudden, we fired it back and had a worse problem. We felt like we had addressed it. We felt like it was running fine and then got it going again and it was really screwed up,” he continued. “That process probably took 15 minutes, but that 15 minutes was the difference in being out there and on the lead lap.

“That was disappointing, but we learned a lot. Unfortunate that [we] had to learn it when we did, but we learned how we need to have our backup engine prepared, all of the other trimming stuff you have to do and the finish work you have to do to have a motor in there and get it right. … It’s not a position you ever want to find yourself in [as a team], but to know that if we give ourselves an hour-and-a-half window, we can probably cut that time down and potentially save a day, so that's a really big deal.”

Kallenbach, who started the season with JD Motorsports before that team closed its doors and has been with the No. 45 team since Michigan Int’l Speedway in August, played a big role in helping everything get done for Parsons to compete at all.

“It’s one of those things where it’s an unexpected problem you don’t necessarily see happening, especially an hour and a half before the race,” said Kallenbach. “You just [have] to make quick decisions and you have to rely on your team. ECR, it wasn’t one of their leased motors, [it was one] that Tommy Joe [Martins] owns, and they jumped right in with us and helped us change it.

“We all know what we normally do when we pull motors … but the team aspect just pulled it through and to only be 14 [laps] down to start the race and stay 14 down until we had a flat tire [inside of 50 laps to go] I think is very impressive and says a lot about this team.

“We ran top 12 lap times literally the entire race and he was just riding.”

Parsons ultimately finished the race in 33rd position, 24 laps down. While it wasn’t a noteworthy result on paper, with all the adversity the team and driver faced before and during the race, just to reach the checkered flag with a mostly clean car was a massive positive for the team.

A live account of the motor swap was detailed by Alpha Prime Racing on X (formerly Twitter).

Alpha Prime Racing and the rest of the Xfinity Series field heads next to Kansas Speedway for the Kansas Lottery 300. Broadcast coverage at the 1.5-mile oval is slated for Saturday, Sept. 28 at 4 p.m. ET, live on CW Network, the Motor Racing Network, and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, channel 90.