Desert Dingo Racing

Category: Prairie City

  • It’s a wrap for the 2010 racing season


    One of these cars is really not like the others.

    Here’s my race recap for our final race of the season, the VORRA Prairie City IV that we did over Halloween weekend.

    It was a dark and stormy night when we pulled into Prairie City.

    Ok, technically, it was neither dark nor stormy, but I’ve always wanted to write that.

    So we pull in Saturday morning and all the great spots are taken and I mumble something under my breath about how racers are worse than Mac fanboys when it comes to being first in line for something.

    We have a (relatively) new motor, boosted to 13-to-1 compression. We have something resembling rally car tires, complete with hot knife custom grooving, and between the 1107, 1112 and 1177 entourages, we have enough food to feed an army.

    The team dinks around with the car all day Saturday and does a first run with the new engine Sunday morning during practice. We give it two thumbs up.

    Moto One (Richard driving, Bob co-driving): Richard launches off the line like a man possessed and immediately rockets from first place to third in the span of about five seconds. Halfway through the first lap Rob “The Politest Man You’ll Ever Meet” Messer gets it a little sideways and rolls. With the Green Booger blocked, Richard signals for a right side pass and leads the rest of the moto, beating 1112 by about a second at the finish line. At some point during the moto the announcer tells the crowd that we’ve rolled so many times that I’ve installed our race camera upside down. Always with the jokes, that guy.

    Moto Two (Bob driving, Crusty co-driving): This time its Messer off the line like a man possessed with Bob in hot pursuit. At some point, a 50-cent part in Messer’s distributor breaks and he’s out of the race. Bob has at least a 10-car-length lead over 1112 when I turn to Wes:

    Me: “Ok, we’ve got a huge lead in this second moto. If we won the first moto and win this one, do we even need to do the third race?”

    Wes: “Your car just rolled.”

    Me: “(Expletive).”

    Wes: “That will teach you to count your points before the checkered flag waves.”

    Green Booger takes the win with ease.

    Moto Three (Crusty driving, Shawn co-driving): This time Messer’s driving like he stole it, leading the entire moto and taking the win. The real battle was for second, which we thought was ours until the last few hundred feet when we ran into one of those big tractor tires.

    Bottom line: I’m pretty sure we got second for the day and second in season points. Now begins a body-off rebuild. Watch for 1107 2.0 in March 2011.

    Thanks again to all the VORRA folks (particularly Heather Jacobini who made it not rain most of the time). Also, thanks go to Bradford Racing for again loaning us a trailer because we’re too broke to get one of our own.

    A gallery of photos from this weekend’s racing.

  • If it weren’t for the last minute, nothing would get done


    Imagine this is 1107, except the parts are 30 miles away from each other and we leave for the race in two days.

    Bob reports that, come hell or high water (probably “hell”), the engine will be back together Wednesday night, tops! We’ve got tires down at Dixon & Son Tires in Watsonville that need to be put on rims we’ve got around here someplace. That plus cramming everything back in 1107, loading the trailer and driving to Prairie City Friday afternoon. Where it will rain all weekend. No problem.

    I’m totally lifting this from the October issue of Dusty Times and will probably do federal time for it. Thank you, Troy Robinson of Koenig Racing and Total Chaos, for the Class 11 writeup (recounting everyone racing the VORRA Fallon 250 night race where we got stuck in a box canyon at 11 p.m., blocking about 100,000 horsepower worth of race vehicles for a good 30 minutes).

    The Class 11 victory went to Gary Herrod (1112, the green one). Herrod and co-driver got stuck in the silt once and learned that they can lift front and rear ends out of the silt onto a more firm part of the track. Herrod even managed to stay in front of a “certain racing truck” during the rough section for quite a way due to the thick dust until the truck was able to get the top speed up and make a clean desert pass (I’m not mentioning any numbers here!!) At the finish, Herrod had a 52 minute victory over second place.

    Bob Messer (1177, the silver one) was running third place most of the day with some long first laps. He gathered it up in the end and finished second place. At one point as they were cruising along they pulled over for a car and later found out it was a pass for position but got the place back a few miles later.

    Richard Palasik (1107, the white one), had some misfortune during pre-running. The ball joint broke on the car and while this is normally not a big deal for the 11s, it wasn’t without drama. During repairs a pry bar slipped, smashing Richard’s hand, sending him to the hospital for stitches, antibiotics and a thumb splint, but not before they fixed the car to drive it out of the desert. During a test run they determined that he can’t drive without opposable thumbs, so a relief driver was put in. The race starts and they take a quart of oil a lap (normal for an air cooled, isn’t it?) and make a pass on the aforementioned Messer, only to pull over a few miles later to add oil and get passed back – they didn’t realize it was for position and they were on the same lap. Oh yeah, one other note. On their way to third place, the steering wheel came off just before check point one at top speed (45 mph). Doesn’t that only happen in cartoons?”

    Things are gonna get interesting in the post-season.

    P.S. Photo of the ‘sploded VW is from an art installation by Damian Ortega.

  • Last race of the season, last minute mods


    Green Booger, we have a little surprise for you.

    What is this? Our third engine rebuild of the season? Yes. Crusty power washed 1107 today. Richard is returning from New Orleans to get the new tires from Dixon & Son. I pushed some paper.

    It’s going to rain this weekend. I can feel it in my previously broken bones from the Baja 1000 (leg) and Hawthorne 225 (rib).

    Oh yeah, Two Larrys and a Megan Racing, if the gun doesn’t intimidate you, maybe this will:

  • The Green Booger strikes again

    Not content to hand us our butts at the last Prairie City race, Two Larrys Racing hit us again with a Desert Dingo Racing tribute video that dropped today on Yahoo Video. An appropriate response could take years and cost millions of lives. But it’ll happen.

    1107’s engine is on its way to Bob’s for a rebuild, which should take a week. The last race of the season, at Prairie City, is Halloween weekend.

    Oh yeah! Also go my copy of Jacques magazine (NSFW) that we’re featured in and which got us a mention in the New York Times.

  • We’re (still) in it to win it


    Technically, Charlie is old skool Desert Dingo, but he’s just so darn enthusiastic, we gave him all the crappy jobs.

    Let’s face it, we’ve had better weekends at Prairie City. First moto the driver’s door popped open, we got black flagged and finished the course just for the points. Second moto we hit a tractor tire, bent three rims and flatted once. Finished the race just for the points. Third moto the engine lost power and we just finished for points.

    With one race left in the season, we’re in second place behind Two Larrys and a Megan Racing. By about eight points. It doesn’t sound like much but in the final race we’ve got to win or The Green Booger has to be hit by a meteorite (while it’s parked off by itself, of course).

    We’ve got two weeks to go. We’ll rebuild the engine to boost the horsepower. We’ll figure out the door issue. I’ll probably find an opportunity to give my favorite Henry V speech.

    We’re not going down without a fight.

    Here are photos from this past weekend’s racing, courtesy of Don Carlson.