VEGAS TO RENO RACE REPORT Before I get started I wanted to thank my friends, family and fans for their well wishes. I also would like to thank my team, Reid & Rick Johnson for all their help to get the car ready for the race and my pit crew Shane, Kevin, Jim, Nick, and Adam from Airdam Clutches and last but not least my co-driver my little bulldog Fernando Flores. Well I’ll start from the beginning before the race. We were running way behind on testing time for the car. We started testing the car Wednesday night. We tested all the way till about 2:00 am. We ran a different transmission on the car to test if it would run better for Baja since this race was just test time for the Baja 1000. We made the wrong decision in going with a higher ratio transmission. But there was nothing we can do about it 2 days before the race so we had to stick with the transmission we had. We were pretty disappointed that we were only able to go about 66 mph. We also could not use the new shocks that FOX provided for us because we had the wrong springs so we went with the old suspension and it was still bottoming out in the rear. We had to take the shocks off at around 3:00 am in the morning. I made the call to bring them back to FOX around 7:30 a.m. Thursday morning. The RND department with Joe and the boys took care of me within 30 mints. These guys at FOX are no joke and they set the car up perfect with just telling them want I needed. I would like to thank Joe and all the guys there for their speedy service. We went right from FOX to the shop to put the shocks back in the car and loaded up and went straight to Vegas. We knew we were going to be super late so I made a call to my teammates, the Murray Bro’s and they helped me out with my tracker and entry forms. My other teammate Cory got my car tech bright and early the next morning. The night before the race we were still trying to dial the clutch in all the way up to 5:00 am. Adam from Airdam Clutches worked all night long to get a good combination to make the car work for the race which I would like to thank them all for all their hard work and taking care of business. We started off the race in 12th position. We did not know how it was going to go because we were concern about the transmission not being right. In the beginning of the race we started passing people early on. It was super dusty and a lot of motorcycles and quads were in front of us which took us a little longer to get around people than we’d liked. As soon as we caught up to some people in the tight stuff we would then get a straight away and they would walk away again to the point where they were 1-2 miles ahead of us so we kept at it and we still again started to pass people. Our car had an approx. max speed of about 66 mph. We had some great battles with Sims, Scanlon, and Lambert all day long. For the first half of the race we were in the top three and then we moved up to second place. We knew it was only a matter of time before we broke a belt. After we replaced the belt we lost a few positions. We started to close in to the people that passed us and then the car started to get vapor lock with the fuel. We thought we were out of gas because we’ve never had this problem since we had fixed everything. After about 10 mints or so the car started back up again. Once again the Murray Bro’s came to our rescue by giving us some high octane fuel. These guys are a class act, once again helping us out. This time I put the hammer down on the car to see what I can do to make up for the time lost. As we hit mile marker 442 we knew the second place trophy truck was coming. We had our eyes wide open and approx. in mile marker 443 we finally saw the second place trophy truck coming. This road was very dusty road and I knew the dust would be heavy for these guys. As soon as I saw them which was about 300 feet behind us, my co-driver told me to pull over. I ended up pulling off the course. As I pulled of the course the trophy truck could not see the course and followed the blue light in back of my car thinking that I was on the course. This is what I think happened. He hit rocks, launched his car into the air and landed on the left hand side of my car. He pushed us for approx. 300 ft. from where he originally hit us which you will see in the photos. I was a little fuzzy in my head since the cage and air scoop went into my helmet. As I felt the trophy truck backed off our car my co-driver was out of the car yelling at the people in the trophy truck. The co-driver of the #19 trophy truck was already out of his truck putting the fire out. My driver was yelling at me to get out of car. I was still a little dazed but when he said “fire” that made me react pretty quickly. The rear shock got hit by the trophy truck which broke off the reservoir and all the oil sprayed over the exhaust that’s what caused the fire. The impact was so hard that the glove box in the car broke off and the plastic in the front popped out of it’s holes where it clips in. The co-driver of the car apologized and asked what he should do and I told the co-driver and Tim to keep going and to finish the race. I was not feeling so hot. That might have been cause of lack food and lack sleep and that we were just in a major accident. We also had the Terrible Herbst helicopter land to make sure we were ok. We thought the rescue team from BITD would be out there in a few hours. This happened around 5:00 pm and we did not get back to pit #14 which was only approx. 12 miles away until around 11:00 pm. At this point I was not a happy camper. I felt like shit, my neck hurt and I was starving, and I had a lump under my chin from who knows what. Today I received a phone call from a person that spoke to Tim (the trophy truck driver) that confirmed exactly what I thought had happened. He was following the blue light or any kind of light thinking that was in the course. To be honest, I would have probably done the same thing but I don’t think I would have gone off course about 30 ft. or so. I’m just glad my co-driver and I are safe. We still have a lot of work to do to get ready for the next race. We might have to build a new car for the next race. The frame is badly bent. We don’t know how much work it will take to fix it. We will know this week. When you see the photos we post you’ll be blown away as to how far we were pushed off the course. The car does not start or run from what we think a wire came off from the jolt of the crash. Look closely at the photos and you will see the fire extinguisher and the plastic from where the impact was off the course. Once again I would like to thank my sponsors for all their support this year.
Posted on: Tue, 19 Aug 2014 00:56:36 +0000