Desert Dingo Racing

Category: The Team

  • Check out the cherry (red) custom steering wheel for 1107

    This steering wheel is too pretty to put in the race car.

    Six foot, fifteen inch tall Canadian rally driver Paul Hartl, who carried the water for DDR at the USA 500, sent me this photo of a new steering wheel for his time in 1107 at “The 24” Labor Day weekend in Fallon. The extension moves the wheel closer to his chest, but most importantly it’s candy apple red flake. And it’s not dirty. That won’t last.

    1107 remains on the truck at its secret location in Scotts Valley. This week I get some tires and rims swapped and finish packing. And pray that our new Lowrance GPS unit arrives.

  • The Hartl Bend



    Crusty demonstrates the Hartl Bend.

    Paul Hartl, Canadian rally driver, came out of nowhere to take Class 11 racing by storm. Sidelined in 2010 with a blown engine, he forged a relationship with Desert Dingo Racing in 2011 and was key to our second place finish at the VORRA USA 500.

    The downside is the dude is like 6 feet, 15 inches tall, and most of that is legs. Srsly, he’s like the Kareem Abdul-Jabbar of Stock Bug off road racing. Ferdinand Porsche wasn’t thinking of Paul when he designed the Volkswagen Beetle, and Paul emerged from the car at the end of the 500 with his knees beat to heck.

    Desert Dingo Racing is nothing if not accommodating, so we put our best people on developing a solution. That solution is the “Hartl Bend”, a rethinking of the piece of roll cage that normally cuts across the dash to provide structural rigidity. It provides mounting points for our Rugged Radios radio and intercom, but sits higher and bends over the steering column so Paul won’t require multiple visits to sports medicine doctors to correct the damage that would otherwise be inflicted.



    Paul and Emme will reprise their driving roles at The 24 Labor Day weekend.

    It’s not just us, though. Paul’s set on racing the Baja 1000 this year, so I hooked him up with my very good friend Gustavo Garayzar in Mexicali who’s doing the 1000 this year. Paul’s flying in to Vegas prior to the The 24, driving to Mexicali, meeting with Gustavo and his team, driving back to Vegas, driving to Fallon for the race, then driving back to Vegas for his flight back to Ontario, Canada. The dude lives to drive. Gustavo will also likely incorporate the Hartl Bend into his Class 11.

    With Burning Man approaching, most everyone on the team will be out on the playa. So for The 24 we’re shanghaing Romy and Dave (the new guys), Tut and Pepper Cote of TutTech Racing, Emme Hall of Hall Ass Racing (and her dad) and Paul.

    Work day today. The rebuilt engine goes in. We weld on a completely new nose (to the car). A new front bumper. I chase some electrical gremlins. Who’s the new guy?

    How Class 11 rolls at Burning Man. (Flying saucer courtesy of artist Carl Deckart).

    P.S. Emme has teamed with Michele Martineau to create Courage Racing Gazelles to race the Rallye Aicha des Gazelles in early 2012 They will be formidable.

  • 29,000 downloads of the Desert Dingo mobile apps. “The 24”, also



    I didn’t think there were this many people on the planet interested in off road racing.

    We just passed 29,000 downloads of our iPhone, iPad and Android apps. I still think we’re the only off road racing team to have one, though you can always check out the DirtNewz app if you’re jonesing.

    Lastly, the first of our fans in Saudia Arabia who contacts me? I send you a Desert Dingo t-shirt.

    We’re jamming to get 1107 ready for VORRA’s “The 24” desert endurance race Labor Day weekend. Crusty went looking for a new nose but came up empty, so Bob will scour car parts yards in the Bay Area.

    Crusty also shipped our shocks off to Bilstein. Joel said the damage was “commensurate with driving your car off a cliff.”

    Ok, he didn’t really say that, but I think he wanted to. We’ll know more when they disassemble them this week.

    Putting the race schedule together already. We have team members coming in from Ontario, Canada (by way of Las Vegas and Mexicali), Washington, D.C. (by way of Sacramento), someplace in Colorado (by way of Ontario, Calif.), Hesperia, Calif., Berkeley, Felton and Boulder Creek. I’ll be driving the team rat rod hauler with 1107 on board to Gerlach, hitchhiking into Burning Man for a couple of days, hitching out and driving to Fallon.

    What could possibly go wrong?

    We’re huge in Saudi Arabia. Srsly.

  • Teardown commences

    Bob Russell, Desert Dingo hero of the USA 500, back at work on 1107.

    Bob, who drove the piss out of 1107 to get us across the finish line before we timed out last week, was back at it Saturday, jacking up the car as part of our standard disassembly after each race. We’re doing a complete engine rebuild. The nose will be cut off and replaced with a junkyard donor. We’re working on an change to the interior code named “Hartl Bend.” I figured out how to get my iPod Shuffle to work with the Rugged Radios comm system and had a nice chat with the dispatcher at the Soquel Conference Center down the road while doing a radio check.

    A gallery of photos here.

  • One (bar) is the loneliest number

    It's lonely at the top.

    This is my favorite photo from the USA 500 and it’s not even of us.

    Rob Messer of Messer Motorsports (No. 1177 and USA 500 winner) sent me this photo that I think captures the absolute frustration when things go wrong during a race. Here’s what he said:

    I climbed up the ridge to get one bar of cell service to call Pit 1 and have a replacement distributor cap delivered. Disappointment was on my mind at the time this shot was taken as we had to wait two hours for a Sportsman buggy (No. 81 – the tiger striped one) to deliver it.

    And yet he won, so don’t feel too bad for him.