GWINNETT COUNTY, Ga. — A Monroe man has found the NASCAR race car that was stolen from a hotel parking lot near the Atlanta Motor Speedway.
The No. 44 Chevrolet was ditched in a wooded area near Loganville and is now headed back to its base in North Carolina. It appears to have sustained no major damage.
The man who came across the car said he did a double-take when he first saw it.
"I just walked up to it and peaked in. I didn't touch the car, nothing,” Philip Whitmer said.
Channel 2 Action News was the first news station to talk to Whitmer, who led police to the stolen car.
He said he called Gwinnett Police as soon as he found it.
Investigators searched the car that seemed to be intact, and not taken for a joy ride.
"There’s no way. No way that that's the car. That's what was going through my head over and over again," Whitmer told Channel 2’s Steve Gehlbach.
The No. 44 Team Xtreme Racing car was supposed to run at this weekend's NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race.
The team’s owner picked it up and the car's now on its way back to the North Carolina shop.
Whitmer says the front air dam had damage and straps were still attached from where the thieves just dumped it onto the grass.
"Then there was ramps right in front of it where they had pushed it off,” Whitmer said.
He said there was no trailer.
Police are still looking for the trailer full of parts, tools and spare engine and pickup that was towing it all, as well as the suspects.
Whitmer says he was not a big NASCAR fan before, but will now cheer for the car he found.
"It would have been nice to take it for a spin,” Whitmer said.
The discovery came too late to help the team this weekend. It was forced to withdraw from Sunday's Atlanta race.
The race car, along with the pickup truck and trailer that were hauling it, were snatched just a few hours before Travis Kvapil was to run in qualifying. Team spokeswoman Amanda Ebersole said police did not recover the other contents of the trailer, which included a spare engine valued at $100,000 and racing equipment valued at $17,500.
For a few hours, the team held out hope of the car being found in time for qualifying Friday, but it was forced to withdraw when it missed NASCAR's mandatory inspection.
Gehlbach talked to the racing team Saturday, who said they are already making plans to race another car next week in Las Vegas.
One of their sponsors offered pit passes for the rest of the season’s NASCAR races for anyone who found the stolen car.
Gehlbach passed along Whitmer’s information to the racing company.
NASCAR's Sprint Cup Series race is scheduled for Sunday at the Atlanta Motor Speedway.
WSBTV
