Renee Tinch works hard on the modified driven by her husband, Ricky Tinch. Typically, the team consists of them alone. However, when Renee has a break in the action, she goes scouring the ground near their pit.
“[I pick up] scrap metal and pieces of everything that people leave in their pits from the night before,” Renee said. “I don’t want a hole in our [modified’s] tires, truck’s tires, or trailer’s tires. There’s no need to be lazy — just pick it up and throw it in a trash can. We keep a trash can in the RV — it’s not hard.”
Renee sees a wide variety of trash, much of which may puncture a tire, especially a costly modified tire that sells anywhere from $125 to $140 new, and can sour a race night quickly.
“It’s aggravating to pull in, unload your car, and realize there are rivet studs and trash there,” said Renee. “People don’t pick up their trash from their food and drinks. Rivet studs, whatever they broke from that night, they just leave it laying. We pick up two handfuls wherever we go.”
Renee takes ownership of her pit area’s cleanliness because her parents once owned a go-kart track.
“[At my parents’ track,] we passed out trash bags to everyone in the pits,” Renee said. “We’d rather have everyone set their trash bag out after the races were over versus throwing it on the ground.”
Ricky Tinch swept his weekend while Renee Tinch swept the pits. Ricky won at Crossville Speedway in Tennessee on Friday and then Mountain View Raceway in Spring City, Tennessee, on Saturday. Unfortunately, despite the Tinches efforts to clean their surroundings, their weekend was met with a twist of irony.
“We had two flats from Crossville on Friday night,” said Ricky. “[We had] one puncture in a truck tire and a screw in the trailer tire.”
The Outside Groove Executive Editor has covered motorsports since 2000. His many awards include the 2019 Eastern Motorsport Press Association (EMPA) Jim Hunter Writer of the Year and the 2013 Russ Catlin Award for Excellence in Motorsports Journalism.
