These photos were edited a day or two ago now, but the story had yet to be written.

Most people reading this should know Ketchup – Mario’s ST. It was featured alongside my car (Mustard) in Performance Ford a couple of years ago and the two have been together at many shows over the last few years. Similar in many ways but also opposites in others, the two are a good pair and we’ve had some awesome times with them, such as this weekend.

On Sunday he and I were hanging out at Brandon’s house along with Derrick and Brenda, and we all had a great time enjoying the weather and working on the cars. Mario had just installed his brand new silver Tarmacs on Ketchup and that day installed his new glow-in-the-dark wing risers and repainted his splitter. After the work we took the opportunity to head out and take some quick photos of the cars before Brandon had to get back home, at which point the rest of us went out for burgers.

On his way home from work today Mario was in a collision; Alex and I were at my place detailing Mustard when I found out. The most important part of course is Mario’s well-being, and he is okay. The Mk3 Focus has proven time and time again to be a very safe platform and the ST did its job to protect him.

I’m not going to go into details as to where it happened, what happened, the state of the car, or anything else. The news of the collision spread quickly through not just our friends but also our networks of fellow Focus enthusiasts though, so I’m sure many reading this will already have known. All night long my phone was blowing from others asking if I knew how Mario was doing and what happened.

I’m sharing these photos to show part of what was a truly fun day, but you’ll see no captions – only because I don’t really know what to write for them now. I know Mario was so pleased with the ST’s new look and how it had come together overall, and they may be just quick shots but I wanted him to have something half-decent to show the car off with because I know he was so proud of it.

We’ll hopefully have Ketchup at the shop soon to look over it and see where to go from here but know that Mario is okay – albeit sore from the impact – and that’s what matters most of all. There’s a lot to deal with over the next little while, and of course we’ll all be helping him with it as much and as best as we can. That’s what family’s for, after all.

-Bill