Team member Khaled Mabrouk, who has been helping us streamline our processes for working on the car and during the race, gave a presentation today to the IIE Annual Conference in San Jose on how his 5S process has helped us work more efficiently on the car and substantially reduce our pit stops.
Category: Technology
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Lifetime LED Lights Sponsoring Desert Dingo Racing for 2013 Season
January 7, 2013, Felton, Calif. – Desert Dingo Racing announced today that Lifetime LED Lights, a new provider of low-draw LED lighting systems for off road racers, truck, UTV and quad owners will sponsor Desert Dingo Racing for its 2013 season.
Desert Dingo Racing will use Lifetime LED Lights’ 31.5-inch (60 LED) and 13.5-inch (24 LED) light bars in its off road desert races as part of the Valley Off Road Racing Association (VORRA) and at the Baja 1000 in November 2013.
“You don’t have to be doing 100 mph across the open desert to appreciate the value of a powerful low-draw lighting system that doesn’t tax your vehicle’s other electronics,” said Lifetime LED’s CEO Ryan Chapman. “Desert Dingo epitomizes grass roots racing at its best and we’re proud to support them.”
Desert Dingo Racing competes in off road desert racing in California and Nevada and is the official World Diabetes Day race car in the Baja 1000. The team took Second in Class in Class 11 during the VORRA 2012 season. The team raises money to support diabetes awareness and education programs sponsored by the International Diabetes Federation.
“There’s little more stressful in off road racing than not being able to see where you’re headed, particularly during the night races,” said Desert Dingo Racing co-founder Jim Graham. “Lifetime LED has a rock-solid design, their prices are the great and their customer service and support the best available.”
About Lifetime LED Lights
CEO Ryan Chapman founded Lifetime LED Lights in 2012 to provide off road racers, truck, UTV and ATV owners with cost effective lighting systems at affordable prices and backed up by great customer service. For more information, visit http://www.LifetimeLEDLights.com or call 585-203-0887.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 race car and the team raises money for diabetes education and awareness programs sponsored by the International Diabetes Federation. To learn more, visit http://www.desertdingo.com. -
Our digitization is complete
Holy cow there’s a racing game that let’s you create a custom off road desert race car.
Romero Rivera races. And he owns 1sane, which allows you to create custom off road race cars.
Romero, who’s racing the Baja 500 in his Class 5, was kind enough to digitize us.
Before we show you the screen shots, here’s his car.
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We hit 40,000 mobile app downloads!
Just in time for our first race of the season at Prairie City this weekend, we cracked the 40,000 download mark for the Desert Dingo Racing iPhone, iPad and Android mobile apps. It’s about 2 to 1 Android vs. iPhone, but that’s down from about 4 to 1 a few months back. Granted, it’s just an aggregation of our blog, Twitter, Youtube and Flickr accounts but you all seem to like it, so thank you.
Had a great dinner with Paul, Ryan and Jean Luc of CBCFS Racing, which will debut their new Class 11 at Prairie City this coming weekend.
Looks like we might be on Good Day Sacramento Saturday morning around 8-ish. We’ll also be live streaming whatever we can from the pits via Justin.tv. More updates to come.
And we’re still huge in Saudi Arabia.
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Why you don’t want to chew gum while racing
I finally got a chance to read through the “Driver’s Guide to Safe Motor Sports”, which I’d downloaded a few weeks back and had time to peruse while watching the Rolex 24.Published by the Federation Internationale de L’Automibile and featuring a great photo of an F1 car stuffed into a SAFER barrier, it turned out to have some great common sense info that applies equally well to Class 11.
Here are some of the choice bits:
“Decorative studs through lips and tongues…could interfere with some medical procedures, while studs in the eyebrows could snag on helmets.”
(This reminds me of a story several years back at Burning Man where a heavily pierced guy wearing only hiking boots bent over to tie his boot, hooked something as he stood up (and what happened next is so horrifying I can’t finish the story).
“Equally importantly, under no circumstances compete while chewing gum – a potential killer if it gets stuck in the windpipe in an accident. It makes sense to remove false teeth, too.”
“Underwear: Don’t skimp on this just because it’s out of sight. It is next to your skin so in a fire it is your last line of defense.” (Nomex tighty whities are in my future).
“Helmets: Colour selection is also important as darker colours absorb more heat, which can increase body temperature and affect performance.” (Great, I have a black helmet because it looked cool).
“Seat belts: Always keep your belts tight.” (I learned that lesson when I fractured a couple of ribs because my shoulder belts were just a tiny bit loose when we rolled the car).
“If an accident happens: If the car is on its roof, support yourself before releasing the seat belts to avoid landing on your head” (or, in my case, landing on your driver).
The guide is a great (and quick) read, particularly for new racers. You can download it here.