Our latest race update

Another great race in the books!  

This was Vegas to Reno – 555 miles in a UTV (desert race buggy).  Not Baja – this one is in Nevada obviously.  It’s the longest off-road race in the United States.

We started 5th of 8 in our class. By mile 20 we were in third but we hit a big rock in a silt rut I could not get out of fast enough and got a rear flat. Dustin changed it but it took longer than normal (11 minutes, should be 4-5) because the hoses from the shock coolers that were just put on were in the way of getting the jack out and back on. 
15 vehicles went by us. In that time and we were now last with 535 miles to go. We worked our way back up.  It stinks when you’re in last – but this race is long, and so is life, so do your best in this moment and keep going.

Trying to pass is tough in the dust. You are blinded the closer you get to the guy you want to pass. But lucky there was some wind to help blow the dust away. 

There are 13 pits set up. Our strategy is to only stop twice for fuel at pit 5 and pit 10. Our chase team would throw ziplock bags with sandwiches to us and on smooth sections Dustin could hand me pieces of sandwich while I was driving. That and Kind bars kept us going for 12 hours of non-stop driving at race speed. 

This strategy worked as we passed a couple of our own class competitors while they were pitting and we weren’t, but we also passed many race vehicles from other classes who were making dust in front of us. We didn’t change drivers like most other teams either. So no race vehicle in this 555-mile race stopped less than us. One flat and two 90-second pits. 

We caught up, 5th, 4th, 3rd, 2nd….we passed our main competitor from Baja and the Factory Honda team who both broke down. We were told that we were 8 minutes behind the leader. (When we drive through a pit we are close enough for VHF radio communication to our team, and they’d tell us how far back we were). 50 miles later they said we were 10 minutes behind. 

Our Honda Talon is underpowered with only 107 hp compared to most others who have  125 or 130 or so. (We are a non-turbo class). So on the high-speed straight sections they were doing about 10-15 mph faster and that’s where they’d pull away on us. In the technical sections, which means rocks or tight turns) we’d catch up. 

Then the leader had to pit once for five minutes and another pit for 7 minutes to work on their car. We were only 4 minutes down with 80 miles to go. At one point about 50 miles out we saw a UTV on the side with the driver out working on the car. We thought (hoped) we could be in the lead. But it was not them. 

The last 35 miles there were brutal rocks up and down the mountain. We made it through fast and with no flats. The leader got a flat there but had it changed in 4 minutes and he had pulled on us again on the fast sections before that. 

The leader started 90 seconds before us so if we were close enough we could still win. But we crossed the finish line 13 minutes behind him so it was not to be. 

We finished second in 11 hours and 45 minutes.

Besides the one preventable flat we ran a perfect race.  
Dustin called the turns perfectly for 12 straight hours without a break. 
So far this year I have one motorcycle race and one UTV race completed- with two second place finishes. Four more races left including the two most epic races on the planet – The Baja 1000 and Dakar in Saudi Arabia. 

I am grateful to be racing both motorcycles and cars still.  It takes a lot of effort and logistics to do it – but it’s a “reason”.