The Car – Desert Dingo Racing

Beetle Dune presser

Volkswagen invited me (and 1107B) to take part in a week-long press event in Las Vegas and Palm Springs, where reporters came in to test drive the new Beetle Dune. After driving the Dune, I didn’t thing anyone would be interested driving an 11 car (particularly in the freezing rain in Pahrump), but, as usual, I was wrong.

At least 1107B has a windshield (1107A does not), so a number of folks layered-up and took the car out for a spin, and the reviews were pretty positive.

Everything kicked off with a briefing at the Vdara on Tuesday, then it was off to drive the cars.

I actually got to drive the convertible model from Vegas to Pahrump and back while Chris Stahl of VW did a phoner in the passenger seat.

No, I did not take it off any sweet jumps.

From there it was off to Palm Springs, me by plane, the cars at the hands of international automotive writers. I got there first. Winning! Also, that’s James Halfacre right there making both cars look awesome.

VW put on a fantastic event and the PR team were wonderful hosts. This greeted me in my room. I wasn’t sure whether to eat it or just admire it (I eventually ate it).

1107B is already on its way back East, our work with is done. 1107A is being prepped by Brian Wallentine for the upcoming Mint 400 in mid-March.

More photos from the Beetle Dune presser are here.

January 9, 2016

A Dingo Chrestomathy 2

We have a similar color scheme at least.

A few weeks ago I went on a rant about some white truck driving around Scotts Valley with “1107 Chase” on a side window and I had no idea who it was. (For the uninitiated, 1107 is our car and any support vehicle must have “1107 Chase” on it to designate it as an official support vehicle).

My associate Dick Paquette pointed out that we don’t have a lock on the 1107 designation, as shown in the following images that I’m sure he googled.

I am thankful Carrol Shelby never heard of Class 11. 75 hp?! Srsly?

Emerson Fittipaldi with a two-engined VW? Who can compete with that? Kenyon Whetsel is freaking me out.

If you didn’t watch the 24 Hours of LeMans, this video captures the drive that every racer in every motorsport brings to what they do. In LeMans, if you walk away from the car a certain distance, you are out of the race. Satoshi Motoyama spent two hours trying to get the Nissan DeltaWing sufficiently roadworthy to get it back to the pits. He couldn’t do it. At the 2008 Baja 1000, I had to radio Weatherman and say we were out of the race. When the team, who’d worked for two hours to get 1107 running again, heard that, we all hung our heads.

Holy crap. The Tijuana Bugfest.

Lastly, congratulations to Julie Pierce, who has served as a nurse at SCORE races, in her first race with her truck ever on Tuesday.

June 26, 2012

Tornado damage – California style

We got hit with a bit of a windstorm on Tuesday. First thing it did lift up the shade structure and push it against the acacias. Then it lifted the shade structure up and smacked it straight down. Then it picked it up again and moved it about seven feet to the right.

While all that was going on, a 70-foot tall acacia went down, missing the new deck (paid for by insurance, along with a new master bedroom when a fir tree hit the house Thanksgiving Day 2010) by about 15 feet.

March 8, 2012

Another Class 11 joining the fray

Is VORRA big enough for two white Class 11s? Only time will tell.

Spent an hour on the phone last night with Paul of CBCFS Racing out of San Francisco. A great guy. He and his buddy are about 95% complete on a Class 11 build that they expect to campaign in the VORRA series and take to the Baja 1000.

We’ll head up to SF later this month to check out their build and have invited them to come down to Felton to check out 1107. We’ll probably also do some practice together over at Prairie City in advance of the first VORRA race of the season. A good time will be had by all.

In other news, Romy jumped on a Craigslist ad for a free hood, free front beams, free doors for our year VW. It’s like Christmas in February.

February 1, 2012

1107 has a new home

Seriously, it looks like 1107 birthed a race transmission.

A good amount of work done this weekend. Got the majority of the interior painted. White because its easy to find bolts when you drop them in a white interior. And we do that a lot. Crusty got most of the refreshed steering box installed, except for this one thing.

Bob dropped off our heads with a guy to get them massaged after a year of abuse and will be hunting junkyards for two new beams this coming week.

We also got Bob’s shade structure installed, which will be 1107’s winter home. We also mostly got 1107 into it except Crusty and I are old and for the life of us we couldn’t get wheels pointed in the right direction so we basically wadded the car into place and dragged the shade structure over it.