Well, I got to spend a "work" day prepping the car for the race. Desert Racing is an addiction more than a sport. There is something about it that hooks you in like a barbed fish hook and gets you to spend all of your hard earned money and time on it!!!
So needless to say I was hooked and I was going to the race. In a "support" capacity this time.
Off to the KC Midnight Special!!
We decided to take the Corolla. I love my truck, but there is something great about a car that can drive 85 all day and get 33MPG!!
It had been pouring rain all day so for a main pit we had a nice pond!
A big thanks to Mike for towing the race car to Primm, NV for us.
Pit Road.
Our neighbors had a nice 5 unlimited car.
Good looking 5-1600 car.
A mean looking Tundra in the pits.
This really good looking Tacoma was over with the SDHQ crew.
A few of the pit's had a lake literally encompassing their trailers since the raining started after everyone arrived.
Buy it up and enter desert racing's Class 12. Or better yet go and buy a class 1600 car! With only 80 horsepower you can go faster than V8 powered trucks with almost twice the suspension. Only a handful of classes are faster. Hard to believe!
This one is for sale too. For a cool $200k you could own "Sheila!"
The sound she makes is electrifying.
http://www.race-dezert.com/cgi-bin/trader/atl.cgi?ct=5&md=second&id=10071
Racing didn't start until 12:30 for us so it was a long night.
There were a lot of Class 11 bugs at the race. Always tempting as an option!
A bad night shot that was brightened up of our car 1099.
A couple more.
Nice Bronco 4x4 Prerunner.
Mike came into pit saying that the steering felt a little weird. It turns out the steering rack was completely loose. Yikes!! Glad he came in. We tightened it up and sent him on his way.
It rained a bit more off and on, but nothing to turn the whole course into a mud pit fortunately. Day 2 was nice, but knowing we had over 12 hours until the next race was brutal. That's a lot of awake hours to kill before needing to be "on" for a race.
There is a natural dirt dyke in the course so we went over to watch the cars come by right there. The slower classes were starting just before sunset so it was great for a few pics and video.
Great shot of a class 11 bug!
Wide open views!!
High attrition rate, as always in desert racing.
Some cars were really flying through the air!
Brent getting reading to head to staging.
Once there you sit and wait. Your nerves are hard to keep under control. The waiting is just about painful.
Might as well check out the other cars. Wyllie racing's tropy truck was running these immense 42" tires!
Those 35" tires look tiny!
Some 10 car competition.
The 10 car we were racing was really nice. A Jimco 2000 with a Fat built Toyota motor and a Fortin transmission. High dollar stuff!
Alright, time to race.
Brent hoping in the car. It's go time.
The only way we can help him tonight!!
And it turned out we would. He did a couple of quick laps, but then we heard he had a flat. He couldn't seem to hear us reply though. We kept asking him which tire so we would be ready. Then we heard some yelling that he was in Wyllie Racing's pit. DOH!!! We threw everything into Brent's Jeep and headed over.
(If you've never experienced the generosity of desert racers, you should. It's downright amazing. We've gotten parts including an entire Transmission from our competitor the night before the Baja 500 etc. Or having a local donate parts from their VW to keep you in the race.)
By the time we got to their pit they had the car up on a Jack. The wire bead on these BFG Baja terrains is the most stout bead I've ever seen. The bad part was that after the tire blew and it was driven on for a while it was all wrapped around the hub and into the disk brakes. It looked like he had gone ripping through some fence. So the Wyllie guys brought over some dikes and we cut it away. About half way through cutting it away we got work that Wyllie needed to come in to pit. BAD TIMING for us. Wyllie Racing was just amazing in the fact that someone, I later heard it was Wyllie's wife possibly, yelled that they had 3 minutes so they could keep helping us and get us out of here.
I can't tell you how awesome that was for them to do!! We kept hustling and the adrenaline was pumping!! We got the tire on the race car and got him moving again. No sooner did we get the gear into the jeep did Wyllie and those giant tires come racing into his pit. That was exciting to see!!
Results of the first tire and wheel: Whoops!
We headed back to our pit and hung tight. The very next lap we noticed that his other rear tire was flat. We got on the radio and started yelling at him to stop. Sadly something turned out to be wrong with his helmet so he rolled right through and past the pit. (The good and bad about Baja Terrains is that they are so stiff they can almost be run without air) He didn't even notice that it was flat.
Just about a minute later we heard that he was stopped right next to the Dike Jump with a flat. DOH! We packed up the Jeep and headed over there!
This time a group of spectators helped us change the spare tire. The jack got stuck in the up position so we all pushed the racecar off it and he finished his laps.
Result of tire two:
Whoopsie again!
A little video of the race. Keep in mind it was shot with my still camera so it's not great.