Colin Braun :: Dad's Corner

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4-22-2010

I am writing this on the way to Talladega. Diane is driving the car, yes a Ford, well Lincoln, Navigator, but that counts. We end up doing this a lot as I have to do engineering work for the ALMS team I work for, so she drives and I work on the computer connected to the internet with my Sprint data card. I am sorry for lack of blogs the past month, but I have been flat out racing with the ALMS team. We won Sebring and were 2nd at Long Beach last week, so are tied for the points lead.

But all I can think about is how to get Colin’s season going. The frustrating part is I have no idea what to do. We talked about this before but parents are supposed to be able to “fix” things for their kids. When we can’t “make it better” we get frustrated. All Diane and I can do is support Colin and tell him to keep working hard and it will turn around. Texas looked good and he had a solid top 15 going.

As most of you know NASCAR has a “Lucky Dog” that lets a lap down car get his lap back when a yellow comes out. Colin and his teammate Ricky Stenhouse were racing for that spot. They were racing so hard and Ricky was doing all he could to hold off Colin. Colin needed that spot and suddenly you had 2 teammates racing for the most important spot on the track. Colin had been fighting a bad push off the corner all day and this time he lost the nose just a little and hit Ricky. It put Ricky hard into the wall and ended his race.

You would think Colin would be happy with a 13th after the start so far, but he was so upset at what happened to Ricky there was no happiness. The crew on Ricky’s car is the same crew that worked on his truck the past 2 years and he knew that he had just caused tons of work for them.

Jack Roush would normally be happy with a 13th from Colin with 11 Cup drivers in the field, but Colin knew there would be no congratulations from Jack today. He knew he had to ride on the Roush plane home with Ricky and his crew and the people that have to fix the car as well as the sponsor people that pay for the car. The glamour and glory of being a NASCAR driver. Man I hope Talladega goes well.

Jeff Braun

About Jeff Braun

Jeff Braun went to his first car race at age 3. He started driving karts at age 7. Jeff graduated from the Milwaukee School of Engineering with a B.S Degree in Mechanical Engineering in 1981.

In 1982, he got an offer to manage a new team (Transact Inc.) to field cars for Alan Kulwicki in ASA competition. Jeff bought out the owners of Transact and became President and majority owner 2 years later.

In 1990 Jeff decided to take Transact into a pure race engineering consulting business. In the years to follow, Transact has engineered almost every type of race car run in the world.

Jeff has won 3 Sports Car championships in his career and many races.

With fellow engineer, Paul Haney, Jeff wrote a race engineering technical book, “Inside Racing Technology”.

Despite all the success as a engineer in major race series, Jeff says racing with his son Colin and family are the most special. The family including son Travis and wife Diane raced karts all over the world winning many races and 5 US National championships with Colin driving.

Jeff and Colin continue to work together on the business aspects of racing now that Colin is a NASCAR Nationwide series driver for Roush Fenway Racing.

Jeff is currently engineering cars in the Grand Am Rolex Daytona Prototype series for Level 5 Motorsports.

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