Desert Dingo Racing

Author: Jim

Mad Media sponsorship

September 25, 2014, Felton, Calif. — Desert Dingo Racing announced today that Mad Media has signed on to sponsor the team’s fifth run at the Baja 1000, which takes place November 12-16 in Baja California, Mexico.

Mad Media first sponsored the Dingos for the 2014 Mint 400 – also known as “The Great American Off-Road Race”. The team was on its final lap when the car was sideswiped by a passing race truck and blew a transmission. Their effort did result in an appearance on the two-hour race recap on NBC Sports.

“The Baja 1000 is a the grandaddy of off road races and we started this team back in 2007 specifically to win this race,” said team co-founder Jim Graham. “Mad Media’s been tremendously supportive of our race program and we’re looking forward to bringing back a win this year.”

The Baja 1000 draws more than 100,000 spectators to Ensenada on the Baja Peninsula for Race Week, which culminates with the estimated 300+ teams pushing their race rigs through downtown streets for a daylong tech and contingency parade. This year’s point-to-point course is a 1,130 mile peninsula run from Ensenada to La Paz.

“We love the underdogs and the Desert Dingo Racing team has raced some of the toughest courses in off road racing,” said Mad Media co-founder Joshua Martelli. “We also respect their work supporting diabetes outreach and education and working with underprivileged kids.”

Desert Dingo Racing campaigns a 1969 Volkswagen Beetle in off road races in the U.S. and Mexico. The team is the official World Diabetes Day off road race team and works with the International Diabetes Federation to raise money for diabetes education and awareness programs. The team makes the car available for public events and distributes thousands of hero cards with the warning signs of diabetes printed on the back in English and Spanish.

About Desert Dingo Racing
Desert Dingo Racing is based in Northern California and campaigns a 1969 VW Beetle in off road races in the U.S. and Mexico. They are the official World Diabetes Day off road race car and the team raises money for diabetes education and awareness programs sponsored by the International Diabetes Federation. To learn more visit www.desertdingo.com .

About Mad Media
2014 marked the fifth year that Mad Media returned as the exclusive marketing group and television production team for The Mint 400. Mad Media was hand picked by General Tire to cover the 2010 Mint 400, and has produced uninterrupted national television coverage – and accompanying DVD and digital programming via iTunes, for the past five years. Mad Media has expanded the reach of the historic Mint 400 race to a global audience. The Mint 400 aired on NBC as part of the Red Bull Signature Series, the most progressive action sports property in the world. For more info, visit http://www.madmedia.com .

September 25, 2014
Baja 1000 prep begins

Toby and Romy working on the front beam.

Rosh, Romy, Toby and I met at Wallentine Motorsports Sunday morning to begin final prep of 1107 for the Baja 1000 in November. (Brian and Tom were delivering a brand new Class 11 to Greg Cottrell of Rugged Radios in Arroyo Seco).

The goal for the day was putting the finishing touches on the first of two beams we’ll take down with us and add cylinder heat temperature and air/fuel mixture sensors and gauges. Once we get everything bolted back in place we’ll do the first of two test weekends at the test track north of Sparks, Nevada.

A closer look at Toby’s improvised hearing protection.

Rosh installed the Bilsteins in the back.

Brian Wallentine invested in a Port-a-Cool swamp cooler that’s bigger than my first apartment.

It doesn’t pay to be the first one here if you don’t have the shop key.

My office.

September 15, 2014
Five’s a charm

The team meets this Sunday at Wallentine Motorsports in Roseville to begin preparation for the Baja 1000 in mid-November. We have two front beams being prepped. We’ll begin a complete nose-to-tail check of every single moving and non-moving piece of the car (thank you Khaled Mabrouk), and we’ll start cataloging our spare parts – what we have and what we need.

With two and a half months to the race, we know of two other teams who are in for the 1,130 mile peninsula run – our friends with Project Baja in Colorado and our very good friends Team H12:One in Ensenada. There’s a couple more teams with potential to make the starting line. It’s going to be an interesting couple of months.

Oh yes, we’ll kick off Sunday’s work day with a gift bucket (race teams don’t do gift baskets, yeesh) sent to us from the great folks at Mad Media.

Dibs on the bucket.

September 9, 2014
Second at Hawthorne

Team Astigmatism (Romy driving and Brian co-dogging) take the first lap.

We rolled, a tire fell off, and spent a lot of time sitting in silt, but despite it all we got second place at VORRA’s Hawthorne 225 night race.

This was our first (and sadly only) VORRA race for 2014, though we’ll be back with a vengeance next year) and it was great to reconnect with everyone and be one of three Class 11s turning out for the race.

Tech goes so much faster when Andrew Jackson is driving for you.

Tech and contingency went great and we only caused a modicum of vexation for the volunteers handling driver registration at the El Capitan. Chuck Gianni pulled our number and we went off the line 11th, which was the first of the 11s and right after the UTVs.

Nothing more fun than sitting in a black car in the hot sun.

Hawthorne is best known (by me anyway) as the place where the military stores munitions (in earthen bunkers as far as the eye can see) and has the terrain where special forces train before deploying to places like Afghanistan and Iraq.

The valley was full of these things.

Romy and Brian took the first lap. Based on our pre-running, we expected them back in about two hours. One hour and 30 minutes later they were on the radio saying they were four miles out. We scrambled to get ready for them.

The car was running well, but we’d pranged one rear rim and decided to swap out the spare with the pranged one. We were averaging about 11 mpg, which was a lot better than expected, considering the amount of silt and climbing we were doing at about 7,000 feet.

Technically, this was shot before the race start, but by the time they came in, it was dark and my iPhone takes crappy night shots.

Gil and Rosh took off into the night on Lap 2. We apparently had a loose lug in a rear wheel, which allowed the wheel to wriggle sufficiently to loosen all the lug nuts and the wheel came off. Also when the wheel came off, the car skidded off an embankment and we got a tow back onto the course from a passing buggie. (Thank you whomever that was).

Rosh and Tom took Lap 3, spent some time sitting behind other vehicles stuck in the silt at RM 9 or thereabouts. Apparently the car got on its side at some point, we got help getting it back on its wheels and we timed out and weren’t able to start the fourth and final lap.

Here’s a gallery of shots from the weekend…

July 20, 2014
Fly the Hawthorne 225
We’re headed to Hawthorne, Nevada, July 11-13 for VORRA’s Hawthorne 225 night race. I’m pretty sure this is the one where I broke a couple of ribs the last time we did raced it a few years back. Good times.

VORRA has released the GPS file. I’ve reformatted it to Google KML and am “flying” the course in Google Earth. If you’re interested, here’s how you can, too.
1. Download the Hawthorne.kml file.
2. Unzip it and put it on your desktop.
3. Load it in Google Earth.
4. Click on the triangle to the left of Temporary Places.
5. Click on the triangle to the left of GPS device.
6. Click on the triangle to the left of Tracks.
7. Click on Path.
8. Look down toward the bottom of the left column for a little icon of three diamonds connected by a line. Click the triangle to the right of that icon.
It’s just that simple. If you’re a total nerd, you can bump up the flight speed by selecting Google Earth Preferences, click on the Touring tab, and plug 269 into the Speed box.
July 2, 2014