Team Astigmatism (Romy driving and Brian co-dogging) take the first lap.
We rolled, a tire fell off, and spent a lot of time sitting in silt, but despite it all we got second place at VORRA’s Hawthorne 225 night race.
This was our first (and sadly only) VORRA race for 2014, though we’ll be back with a vengeance next year) and it was great to reconnect with everyone and be one of three Class 11s turning out for the race.
Tech goes so much faster when Andrew Jackson is driving for you.
Tech and contingency went great and we only caused a modicum of vexation for the volunteers handling driver registration at the El Capitan. Chuck Gianni pulled our number and we went off the line 11th, which was the first of the 11s and right after the UTVs.
Nothing more fun than sitting in a black car in the hot sun.
Hawthorne is best known (by me anyway) as the place where the military stores munitions (in earthen bunkers as far as the eye can see) and has the terrain where special forces train before deploying to places like Afghanistan and Iraq.
The valley was full of these things.
Romy and Brian took the first lap. Based on our pre-running, we expected them back in about two hours. One hour and 30 minutes later they were on the radio saying they were four miles out. We scrambled to get ready for them.
The car was running well, but we’d pranged one rear rim and decided to swap out the spare with the pranged one. We were averaging about 11 mpg, which was a lot better than expected, considering the amount of silt and climbing we were doing at about 7,000 feet.
Technically, this was shot before the race start, but by the time they came in, it was dark and my iPhone takes crappy night shots.
Gil and Rosh took off into the night on Lap 2. We apparently had a loose lug in a rear wheel, which allowed the wheel to wriggle sufficiently to loosen all the lug nuts and the wheel came off. Also when the wheel came off, the car skidded off an embankment and we got a tow back onto the course from a passing buggie. (Thank you whomever that was).
Rosh and Tom took Lap 3, spent some time sitting behind other vehicles stuck in the silt at RM 9 or thereabouts. Apparently the car got on its side at some point, we got help getting it back on its wheels and we timed out and weren’t able to start the fourth and final lap.
Here’s a gallery of shots from the weekend…
