Pepper and Emme at the end of VORRA’s “The 24” desert endurance race.
Here’s my post race recap. Tons more to come over the next few days.
With most of Desert Dingo getting their freak on at Burning Man, we recruited an all-star celebrity line up of racers and pit people for Fallon, including:
- NORRA 1000 veteran Emme Hall of Hall Ass Racing
- Baja 1000 veteran (and Emme’s dad) Larry Hall
- MORE 2010 Sportsman class champions Tut and Pepper Cote
- Six foot 15-inch tall Canadian rally car driver Paul Hartl (inventor of the Hartl Bend)
- Newest Dingo team member Romy Frederick (who gets all the crappy jobs)
- Me
My sign for hitchhiking out of Burning Man before driving the car hauler to Fallon.
Normally we show up with a rolling pan and box of parts, but this time, for some reason, 1107 was buttoned up and on the truck a week and a half before the race.
Day One
We were first 11 off the line Saturday morning, quickly settling into our routine of driver and co-driver complaining over the radio about how rough the course was. Tut and Pepper clocked 1:14 and 1:22 lap times on the 41-mile loop course. Paul and Romy swapped in, logging a 1:05 first lap, getting us to thinking we might give Class 1 Superman Sam Berri a run for his money.
Then things went all poopy shitsplosion and 1107 rolled in after Lap 4 with a broken driver side shock tower. Tut took 45 minutes to McGyver it, using a borrowed welder, some angle iron, a couple of tongue depressors and a Gatorade bottle. We were back in the race.
Our strategy was to swap out driver/co-driver every two laps, giving each pair about 2.5 hours in the car. I called 1107 in at one point to grab a spare alternator belt for Team Skittles, who’d shredded one earlier in the day. Skittles loaned Messer Motorsports (recently renamed Deserts 11) a stock transmission after they broke one on Lap 1 or 2. The second tranny gave up the ghost in “Death Valley” as we’d come to call it and 1177 called it a day.
I’m sure our drivers will chime in with more interesting stories, but overall Day One was largely uneventful and with 12 hours done we’d ticked off seven laps.
Day Two
Race Director Wes Harbor announced the land rush start with a tire change. I moseyed over to the 1166 pits where the following conversation took place:
“We don’t want to change a tire.”
“We don’t want to change a tire, either.”
“Ok.”
I moseyed back to our pits.
Out on the playa 1166 and 1107 lined up side by side and tried not to make eye contact with the other teams. It worked. We were back to racing.
Somewhere around Lap Three things started going south. It might have been chunks of metal coming out of the place where the front torsion bar goes. It might have been the driver side shock glowing red. Thankfully we were going counter clockwise and could snowplow through the silt.
We start poaching co-drivers from other teams.
At one point 1166 radioed in they’d bent a tie rod. Tut and Emme pulled over and helped them replace it with our spare. For Lap Three we borrowed a 15-year-old co-driver from Deserts 11. Romy and Paul took over for Lap Four as time started counting down and 1107’s front end continued to degrade. When they pulled into the pits with two hours left, a quick check found we’d ripped the entire top off the passenger side front beam, the shock had punched through the fender well and was tangled in the fuel regulator hoses.
Not wanting to distract Pepper and Emme, who were belting in, we opted not to mention it. To keep the weight down, we also didn’t install the light bar and waved as they drove into the sunset.
By this time people were getting loopy and Pepper was calling out mile markers in a pretty good imitation of The Count from Sesame Street.
We decamped to the start / finish line and at five minutes to 8 p.m. we saw the telltale dust cloud of a race car without driving lights charging across the desert. One minute later we spotted the TrailGlow number panels and started prying the foil off our single bottle of cheap champagne. We were still working on the wire around the cork when Pepper and Emme cleared the finish line and power slid to a stop.
Thanks to everyone who loaned us tools, parts, angle iron and co-drivers. Special thanks to everyone who fed me as I wandered around the pits. See you all at Prairie City.
Photo galleries will start going up tonight.
