By T.J. Buffenbarger
Imagine pouring your heart and soul into designing and building your very first race car and having a future NASCAR star drive it into victory lane the first night out of the box. Joe Devin could never imagine in his wildest dreams a debut for the new DRC chassis as took place at Hartford Speedway Park during the All Star Circuit of Champions event. Kahne drove the new car to victory in it’s very first outing lapped up to the eighth place car.
Joe is the son of USAC official Mike Devin, and has done quite a bit on non-wing racing on his own. Joe has also worked for Stealth and currently works at Beast Enterprises in Indianapolis. Devin has aspirations though of building cars on his own someday, and this car was the first major step towards that.
Kasey was also very impressed the performance of the new DRC car.
“The car was awesome in the slick, and just got better as the race went on. We were a little off at the start of the night, but once we got the car dialed in it was a rocket ship!”
The project all started with a conversation with Kasey’s cousin Willie Kahne about Joe’s desire to build his own sprint car.
“We were talking to Willie (Kahne) about it during the winter, and they wanted a car. I have been wanting to do this for a while, and whoever was building cars for them last year really didn’t want to build one, so I felt it might be the right time to break in to this deal”
Willie along with brother Kole Kahne teamed up with Joe and drew up the design for their new split bar chassis. The car is nothing radically different from any other down tube sprint car. The performance though for a debut was remarkable as Kasey set fifth quick time, transferred through his heat, and took he lead from Kenny Jacobs on lap 12 and went on to dominate the event.
As for future aspirations, Joe jokingly hoped after the win he would still have a day job. There is still a lot of work to be done for DRC, but one could not ask for a better opening night.
“Who knows, it might take off, it might not, but it was a hell of a first night”