In my last installment I described, in what was probably
excessive detail, the self-imposed ignominy of my first professional off-road
race. That event turned the light on for me in regard to how serious this whole
desert racing thing is and what the true level of investment is. Not only the
financial investment from Steve & Tony who own and run the team, but the
personal investment of blood, sweat, tears and time of every guy and gal who
works on these buggies to get them ready for us to race.
The process for preparing an Unlimited class Truck or Buggy
(Trophy Truck / Class-1) doesn’t vary much. In most cases, after every race the
vehicles are completely stripped down to their chassis. Every inch of tubing
and every weld is inspected for damage and repaired if needed. All the suspension
bits are magnafluxed or x-ray inspected to look for the beginnings of internal
structural failure. Every ball joint, heim joint or other suspension pivot
bearing is thrown away and replaced. The shocks, the massive King Racing or Fox
Racing multi-bypass shocks and coilovers must be completely torn down and
rebuilt. Engine, transmission and clutch? Rebuild them as well. All told a team
racing at this level will spend no less than $15,000 and often upwards of
$30,000-$50,000 just to prepare a Truck or Buggy for a race. That’s before
tires, fuel, food & lodging for the team registrations & insurance etc…..
Add to that, the time that the guys and gals in the shop put
in. The weekend days and late nights working on the Truck or Buggy, the days
away from “regular jobs” to go to the races and it all adds up to one
conclusion for me. This isn’t just Steve, Tony, Mickey and I going off into the
desert to have a good time. This is a team sport, and there are a lot of people
who have a lot of themselves invested in this thing and I’d better damned well
start taking that seriously. And I did….
I mentioned previously that I’d gotten in better shape this
year and after Caliente I doubled down on that effort. I put in roughly 300mi a
month on the bike through the summer, mixed that with a bit of weight training
and a bunch of work on the bleachers at a nearby High School football field. I
spent hours upon hours searching YouTube for every bit of film I could find of
the course and while I know that in no way can video prepare you for the
physicality of desert racing, I wanted to at least know what type of terrain to
expect and when. When August rolled around I was in pretty darned good shape
for a 45 year old Silicon Valley desk jockey and as prepared as I could be at
this stage in my experience for the longest off-road race in the United States....
The Best In The Desert Vegas to Reno.
The race began in the early 80’s as the “Frontier 500” ran
by the late Walt Lott and the “High Desert Racing Association” and was taken
over by former competitor Casey Folks’ “Best In The Desert” organization in
1996. The race uses a number of different routes depending on the year but
usually starts in either Beatty or Alamo, NV (about an hour North of Vegas) and
ends in Dayton, NV (about 20min East of
Carson City). The courses are usually 500-600 miles in length and the winners
usually finish in roughly 9hrs give or take depending on overall course length.
Teams qualify on the Wednesday, run through registration & tech on Thursday
and the race starts on Friday morning and there are often competitors still
filing into the finish after sunup on Saturday.
For the 2015 running, we’d planned to have the buggy in Vegas in time for qualifying but issues with getting the new engine installed required that we skip qualifying and start from our draw position which wound up being pretty close to the front of those who didn’t participate in qualifying. The upside was that the team had a chance to do more testing in Parker, AZ on the way to Vegas than they would have if we’d been at the qualifying session.
I cringed a bit when I found out where the host hotel was
for the race….North Las Vegas…hoping that nobody in the area read and was
offended by my account of my brief visit to North Las Vegas in the last
installment my buddy John and I set off from Mountain View for the race.
We didn’t encounter any stories of murder on this trip, and
the only issue encountered was BofA shutting off my credit card because I
bought gas in two states in one day….huh? We arrived at the hotel a day ahead
of the team, had a good dinner and a few drinks and called it a night.
The next day John and I drove down South of Vegas to observe the qualifying sessions near Primm, NV. You couldn’t see much of the qualifying loop from the spectator area but we did get a real sense of what kind of speed these Unlimited class trucks & buggies are capable of. More astonishing than that though was the size of the operations in support of the guys at the pointy end of the class.
Crews for the trucks belonging to Bryce Menzies, RPM Racing and Rob MacCachren numbered in the 30’s with all manner of haulers and support vehicles in tow, and this was just for qualifying. Each of the teams, ours included would have at a minimum 4 chase vehicles following along during the race and leap-frogging the race vehicle and each other on the paved highways then dashing a short distance into the desert for pit stops in remote spots in the desert.
The following day was technical inspection, contingency and
the drivers meeting at the host hotel in North Las Vegas. Luckily, it began at
noon…in Vegas…in August. So it was only about 115 outside. I’m pretty sure I
drank ½ my body weight in water over the course of the day. Why they don’t do
this after sundown was completely lost on me and damn near everyone else I
spoke to.
After this was complete we re-loaded the buggy onto the trailer and headed to the drivers meeting. There were just under 900 drivers and navigators representing over 230 teams in the room and we were all entertained by the affable Casey Folks and his collection of “Folks-isms” during the meeting. A number of competitors suggested a drinking game or BINGO card for next year.
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| The biggest drivers meeting I've ever seen... |
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| Just a few of the different course markings we had to look forward to.... |
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| Final nut & bolt check in the hotel parking garage while an evening thunderstorm raged outside... |
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| 770hp of Small Block Ford... |
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| This is actually happening isn't it? |
The tow rig had to be there at least 2hrs before the start
in order to find a spot to unload, get the buggy warmed up ad into the staging
line in time. Steve and I left Vegas about 2hrs after the tow rig and planning
to arrive at the start about 15min before the first racer departed.
Making our way from Vegas to Beatty provided some interesting
sights along the highway. The first of which was Creech Air Force Base. If you
aren’t familiar, it’s the central hub of the USAF drone program. Somewhere on
that base is a kid, sitting in a room, flying a Predator Drone that is actually
over Afghanistan. However you feel about the practice of remote warfare, the
technology that supports it is pretty staggering and kinda fucking awesome.
Here’s hoping one of those kids is sending a “message” to ISIS today.
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| I nearly barfed.... |
I shudder at what kind of souvenir one might take home from such a place….and at the amount of antibiotics one would need to get rid of it…..
I fought back the nausea and drove further North to the start…
We were unable to get anywhere near the start due to the
traffic in the paddock area but even from the shoulder of the highway we could
hear the howl of the first few Trophy Trucks and buggies departing the line.
Steve and I then made a dash to pit 1 to wait for Tony and
Mickey to go by. In this first pit each of the Unlimited class racers that we
were up against had a chase truck in wait. Most of the racers wouldn’t be
stopping here as it was only about 30mi into the race. Quite a few though had
already encountered trouble. One of the TSCO trophy trucks had blown an engine before
even making it to pit #1, Steve Strobel tossed a drive belt off his engine and
had to stop for a quick repair and frequent pole sitter Dale Dondel had an
extended pit stop due to what sounded like an ignition related issue on his
Roberts Racing Trophy Truck. There were a few other vehicles that broke down in
the first 30 miles and after a while, Tony & Mickey came through, the buggy
in perfect shape and having picked up about 5-7 positions on the course.
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| Pit #1 and all's well.... |
A what?
Yeah, one wears a catheter on your junk so you can relieve
yourself during the race without pissing in the seat. Thankfully it’s not the
type of catheter that they put up into your urethra if you are bed-ridden in
the hospital. Instead it’s like a really thick condom with a 4’ long tube on
the end. Instead of lube, like a normal condom this one has an adhesive on it so
it sticks to your schmeckle and seals to your skin.
Yep, it’s just as comfortable to wear as you might imagine. The real prize though is removing it.
Not glamorous.
About 20min after we arrived at pit #5 the buggy made it’s
way to pit #2. They had a small oil pressure issue that was quickly rectified
by adjusting the dry sump pump and they were on their way without losing much
time at all and still having picked up a few more positions in the race.
About 15min later my cell phone went off with a text message
from Mickey.
If your asking yourself, WTF is Mickey doing texting you
from the buggy in the middle of the race you’d be asking yourself the same
question as I was at the time.
Mickey had to use his phone to text me because the buggy was
absolutely dead. No power. Electrical system completely dead. Nothing, nada,
zilch. He and Tony were stranded on course roughly ½-way between pit #2 &
#3 and about 5mi off of the nearest paved road. Had they been in a location
were they could be easily towed to the next pit we might have been able to
attempt repair and continue but their location was not conducive to that. The
options were for them to fix the buggy where it sat and continue or accept a
tow off the course and get a DNF. Due to the nature of the electrical failure,
option 1 wasn’t an option. We were done.
The team made it’s way to the ranch road along the highway
that the course marshals said the buggy would be towed to and waited. When they
arrived we found out that Mickey had struck out on foot and walked back on the
course over a mile each way (August, Nevada, 115 degrees, in a firesuit) to retrieve
a battery from a Trophy Truck that had blown an engine on the off chance that a
freshly charged battery might get the buggy restarted and limping on its way to
the next pit or a spot to be towed there from…no dice.
223 Trucks & Buggies and 113 motorcycles & quads would
start the race less than ½ would finish. So at least we had company……..
This series is all about the experiences and what I’m
learning in my introduction to professional off-road racing. I’ve been in
involved in grassroots sports car racing for years and had my share of disappointments
caused by mechanical failures large and small. The experience in this case for
me is one of incredible build up and anticipation. Excitement at a level I’d
not yet experienced about an adventure that I wouldn’t have the opportunity to
take part in. That and incredible disappointment, but not for me. I felt
horrible for those guys and gals who put so much, for so long into that buggy
to get it ready for that race only to have it end so soon after it had started.
I’ve learned, that even in professional racing
with professional, paid, full-time support staff one little thing, outside of
your control can end your day just as easily as it can for some programmer auto-crossing
his Miata on the weekends.
After we loaded the dead buggy on the trailer and the team
left to head home to Phoenix John and I continued North heading home via Reno.
We wound up staying in the same hotel as everyone else was and ran into Jason
Voss’ team having their victory dinner, their third in a row for that race. It
didn’t hurt as much as it inspired.
As I write this, it’s cold, rainy and the desert racing
season seems as distant as Tonopah, NV is from Mountain View, CA but even still
I’m feeling the urge to get back to it. To continue to experience, measure
myself against the challenges, improve and chase our first victory.
