Graveyard Ghosts: Kenny Habul’s No. 88 SunEnergy1 Chevrolet

Ron Lemasters | 8/21/2017

News Racecar Graveyard

What better car to highlight during solar eclipse day than the No. 88 SunEnergy1 ride of Kenny Habul from 2016. Better yet, no eclipse glasses are needed!

Driver: Kenny Habul       

Car: No. 88 SunEnergy1 Chevrolet Camaro

Track: Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course (Aug. 13, 2016)

Bio: Race tracks, by and large, are miserable places when it rains. Even road courses, which do race in the rain, are miserable when you’re trying something you don’t do all that often, in conditions that would drive ducks indoors.

That’s the situation that Kenny Habul found himself in during the 2016 version of the Mid-Ohio Challenge for the NASCAR Xfinity Series. Habul raced the three road-course events for JR Motorsports in 2016, bringing sponsorship from his SunEnergy1 energy business. An experienced road racer, Habul was in the same boat as the rest of the field that day in Lexington, as the 2.258-mile road course more closely resembled the Ohio River than one of the best courses in the country.

The NXS cars themselves are not built to race in the rain, even on rain tires, but they can do it. They did, with limited success during the hardest of the showers. Habul was victim of several off-track excursions during the 54 laps he completed, spending some time in the sand traps and sliding through the grass. He was not alone. Diving into Turn 4 at the end of the back straight, he ducked inside Tim Cowen’s car in an effort to take a spot and wound up beached in the huge trap on the outside of the corner. He was able to get going again, and after another off-track excursion in Turn 1, he parked it for the day.

Habul finished 36th in the race, and the car was replaced at JRM following the season, paving its way to Dirty Mo Acres to join its brethren in the woods.