The 1910 leaving the start at Vegas 2 Reno. Mesa Arizona – Starting the race into blinding sun is never fun. The dust was heavy early in the race but we battled through and started making up ground on Corey Sapington. We closed in on Corey and were about to pass when out of the dust a wheel came flying right at us. It landed right in front of our RZR and we just ran it over. Corey had a mechanical failure causing the wheel to come off.
Battling through heavy dust and slower traffic we found ourselves in a battle with Johnny Angel. I was able to real Johnny back in and as I was going for the pass a huge rock was in my line. The impact shot us off course and we broke a wheel. Sheldon Stowell jumped out and made quick work of the tire change. After running hard for a few miles we heard something else let go. A quick inspection reveled our connecting rod for the sway bar broke. We did not have any extra parts with us so we pushed on to pit 3. My crew pulled the broken parts off the RZR. They were going to fix them and reinstall at pit 4. The drive between pit 3 and 4 sucked without the sway bar.
My crew installed the repaired parts and we were back at it. We pushed hard and just before pit 7 I picked a bad line and dropped into a huge rut. Brian Bush of the 1911 RZR stopped to offer us a hand but we were able to back out without any help. At Pit 7 I handed the 1910 Polaris RZR XP 1000 off to Kevin and co-driver Mike.
Kevin quickly got into a rhythm and started to catch a few car and bikes on course. When we hit pit 10 we had already passed 3 care and two bikes which definitely made they miles go by fast. We knew we would be getting caught by the unlimited vehicles sooner than later and at pit 10 we were informed that we had the TT of Voss about 20 minutes behind us. So we decided to push the car a little to try and keep them behind us as long as possible. During this time we got into the mountain area of the race where I believe our smaller car was able to push through the tight turns faster than the bigger heavier cars trying to catch us. We were able to stay in front of Voss till pit 11.
The section between pit 11 and 12 is all sand whoops was a high speed elevated wash road that we could put the hammer down and hit over 80MPH. Pit 12 where we stopped for fuel and car check. Coming out of pit 12 was the worst loose rock terrain I have ever driven in. It was a good 4 miles of loose shale sharp rocks that our ITP tires went through without a single puncture. By far the sharpest and worst rocks I have ever raced through. Just about 2 miles outside of pit 13 on a 6 mile long silt straight we were unfortunately caught by the 3rd place trophy truck on course and where given a siren warning and as we went to move off the side of the course contact was made with us pushing us off the cause and to the side cause the car to violently roll several times coming to rest on its wheels. The LSR built chassis held up well and kept us safe. We limped the RZR into pit 13. The damage was too bad for us to continue.
LSR would like to thank all their great sponsors. |
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