Desert Dingo Racing

Category: Mint 400

  • Mad Media sponsoring us for the Mint 400

    Mad Media sponsoring us for the Mint 400

    MAD MEDIA SPONSORS DESERT DINGO RACING FOR THE 2014 GENERAL TIRE MINT 400 PRESENTED BY POLARIS

    February 18, 2014, Felton, Calif. — Desert Dingo Racing announced today that Mad Media has signed on as chief sponsor for the team’s first race of the 2014 season – the legendary General Tire Mint 400, presented by Polaris which takes place March 12-15 in Las Vegas. Over one thousand of the world’s top off-road championship competitors will do battle in twenty different classes of vehicles across the brutal and unforgiving Mint 400 racecourse in front of thousands of spectators and race fans. Crowds in excess of forty thousand are expected to attend the festivities on Fremont Street East as well as The Mint 400 race – which are free to attend.

    “We raced the Mint in 2009 and had an absolute blast,” said Desert Dingo co-founder Jim Graham. “The Mint 400 has the best spectating access, the best media coverage, and is by far the most challenging off road races in America.”

    The Mint 400 features a week of festivities in Las Vegas, including the 4 Wheel Parts Mint 400 Off Road Vehicle Parade down the Las Vegas Strip on Wednesday March 12, the Rugged Radios Driver Meet & Greet March 13, Contingency and Tech Inspection on March 14 on Fremont Street and racing on Saturday, March 15 just South of Las Vegas near Jean, Nevada.

    “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 a team of high tech professionals based in Santa Cruz and Silicon Valley who campaign a 1969 VW Beetle in off road races in the U.S. and Mexico. They are the official World Diabetes Day off road racecar 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 marks the fifth year that Mad Media will return 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 they have 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 – and they will be expanding their coverage in 2014. The Mint 400 will air on Sunday, July 6, 1 – 3 p.m. ET on NBC as part of the Red Bull Signature Series, the most progressive action sports property in the world.

  • Buttoning up

    Buttoning up

    600carprep

    1107 is coming together.

    The team got together in Roseville today at Wallentine Motorsports to continue buttoning up 1107. Rear fenders go on tomorrow and minor tweaks continue. It gets wrapped the end of next week. I’m working on the logistics guide and hero card design this weekend.

    It’s going to be a fun race. Some photos from today’s work…

  • Closer still

    Closer still

    600

    Romy welds all the things.

    Our Bilstein shocks arrive this coming week. The beam will be painted. Heck we even ordered a new filter for the Parker Pumper. Brian Wallentine got some shots from this weekend’s work.

  • 2014 race schedule

    2014 race schedule

    600mint

    We’re returning to race the Mint 400. One of my favorites.

    VORRA has announced it’s 2014 race schedule, and we were waiting on it to lock in what races we’ll be doing. With that announcement, we’re looking to do five races this year, kicking it off with the awesome Mint 400 in Las Vegas in March, followed by the three VORRA desert races and then returning to (win this time) the Baja 1000 in November.

    Here’s what the schedule is looking like:

    2014 Race Season

    March 12-16 The Mint 400 Las Vegas, NV
    May 23-25 Desert Race – Yerington 300 Yerington, NV
    July 12-13 Desert Race – Hawthorne 225 Night Race Hawthorne, NV
    August 30-31 Desert Race – Fallon 250 Fallon, NV
    November 12-16 Baja 1000 Ensenada, Mexico

    Getting to Baja will be a bit more of a challenge this year. If you haven’t heard yet, the toll road sort of collapsed a couple of days ago. We may need to leave here early to beat the rush. Like in September.

    tollroad

     

  • Rocket runs to MasterCraft Safety, Bilstein and Metalcraft

    The folks at Mastercraft Safety are miracle workers

    Scotts Valley (holla!) native Shelby Lynn Reeves shows off our completely refurbished Comp 4 racing seats from MasterCraft Safety.

    Thursday was driving day for Bob Russell and me with Bob headed to MetalCraft Motorsports and Transmissions in Sanger to have master transmission guy Scott Sebastian rebuild our race transmission and me hitting Santee and Poway to have MasterCraft Safety refurbish our racing seats and confab with the team at Bilstein, who take good care of us in the shock absorber department.

    Me first. I departed Desert Dingo Racing HQ around 7 p.m. Wednesday southbound, pausing for sleep breaks at a truck stop, residential cul-de-sac and an oceanside rest area, arriving in Santee in time for an 8:30 a.m. Thursday meeting with Shelby Lynn Reeves, Safety Apparel Product Manager and Marketing Assistant with MasterCraft Safety.

    Because I’m an idiot, I gave her the wrong model name for our seats. Being the professionals that they are, Shelby said, “Give us an hour and a half.” With that I was on the road to Poway to meet with Joel Ward and his team at Bilstein.

    Joel and Juan giving me a shop tour at Bilstein off road HQ in Poway.

    Joel and his team have been helping us out since we started our race effort back in 2007. We were constantly blowing out shocks because we were idiots (you’re seeing a pattern here) until we got our suspension dialed in and now 1107 rides like butter. Despite all the aggravation we’ve put them through, Joel’s team added us to their hall of fame.

    Bilstein Hall of Fame

    What the?! Someone else’s car photo is bigger than ours? This aggression will not stand, man.

    In appreciation for all the work they’ve done for us, we’ll be flying a Bilstein flag from our radio mast at our races, starting with Yerington in a week.

    Bidding Bilstein a fond farewell, I raced back to Santee to meet again with Shelby and our too-pretty-to-install-in-the-car race seats. It was like that softball-sized hole we sort of burned into the driver’s seat at the Mint 400 never existed. I also grabbed MasterCraft logos to run on 1107 for the season. Thank you Shelby and MasterCraft.

    With that I was out the door and northbound to home, dropping off the seats with Crusty around 9 p.m. and actually back at Desert Dingo HQ at 9:30. Total elapsed time, 30 hours. Total mileage, 1,030. Average speed, including sleeping, sitting in line at fast food drive-throughs and taking meetings, 34 mph.

    While I was being wined and dined like a big shot, Bob Russell loaded five VW transmissions into Scott Anderson’s Honda Element and drove them to Sanger to have Scott Sebastian of MetalCraft Motorsports and Transmissions work his magic on them.

    It took us a while to learn that one thing you don’t want to skimp on is transmissions and since we started using Scott Sebastian and Metalcraft, we’ve never had an issue.

    Smart Class 11 racers, like Robert Johnson, who was also at Metalcraft, rebuild their trannys after every other race. Not us. We went seven races, which Scott wasn’t all that keen about. Anyway, Scott rebuilt our primary race transmission (it showed remarkably little wear and tear), he will build a second race transmission out of three additional transmissions Bob delivered, and he’ll do some work on Bob’s bus transmission. So Bob departed with five trannys and returned with one. Here’s what it looks like:

    Pretty!

    A whirlwind of work planned for this weekend. More photos to come.