A pair of Georgia car thieves got a little more than they were expecting on Friday morning after they ended up stealing a NASCAR->ke3635 Sprint Cup racecar that was being prepped for this weekend’s Folds of Honor QuikTrip 500 at the Atlanta Motor Speedway. The good news is that the $250,000 racecar and the 2004 Ford F-350 Super Duty were recovered less than 24 hours after being stolen, but the trailer and the rest of its contents (including a $100,000 backup engine and at least $17,500 worth of other equipment) are still missing.

Rather than being shipped in a big car-hauling semi, the No. 44 Team Xtreme Racing Chevrolet SS was being hauled by an old Ford F-350 Super Duty and a fairly basic car hauler when it was stolen from the parking lot of a hotel near the track in Hampton, Georgia. The unconventional method of transportation was due to the heavy snow in the Northeast (Team Xtreme is based in New Jersey), so the racecar was sent down ahead of the rest of the crew to beat the storm.

CNN reports that the truck and racecar were both found abandoned in Stockbridge, Georgia (about 50 miles about 20 miles northeast of the race track in), and the car was ditched along the side of the road in as shown above in an image courtesy of Team Xtreme Racing’s Twitter page. There have still been no arrests in the theft, but police do have some security footage of the truck being stolen from the hotel as well as fingerprints on both recovered vehicles.

As a result of the theft, Team Xtreme Racing was forced to withdraw from the race, but the team plans to be back in action next week at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway.

Continue reading to learn more about Team Xtreme Racing.

Team Xtreme Racing

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Unlike most of the big teams competing in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series, Team Xtreme Racing is a small, one-car operation. It was coming off a 32nd-place finish in its first-ever Daytona 500 with Golden Corral (shown above) as the main sponsor and Reed Sorensen behind the wheel, but this weekend’s Atlanta race was sponsored by Phoenix Warehouse and Travis Kvapil was scheduled to drive the car.