I want to first start by saying thanks to all of our sponsors for making racing possible - Lonestar Racing, ITP Tires and Wheels, Queen Racing, KC HILITES, Factory UTV, Dalton Clutches, and Bella Terra Realty. I would also like to give a huge thanks to my friends for taking time out of their busy schedules to come pit for me as well as my girlfriend and family for all of the pre race prep they helped me with!
We started 23rd off the line right behind Schueler, not the best starting position but definitely not the worst! For the first 50 miles or so, I felt that I would just pace Schueler as they are always a top contender and I didn't want to get ahead of myself. Once I started to catch them and get close enough to pass, my co-dog and I decided we should go around. Schueler's co-driver waved his hand in the mirror that he saw us and we waited for them to pull off. Huge thanks to them for not making me tail them for miles to pull over, they acted as true sportsmen! we continued on and it seemed as if we were kind of out on our own. We passed a few broken cars and were still in a lot of dust, but couldn't see anyone's rear facing lights. As we pushed forward, we caught up to Marc Burnett. He made us work for the pass, and I honestly contemplated nerfing him as we were getting hit with tons of big rocks and followed for a long while with no sign of them noticing us, but rather than damage 2 cars we decided to take the rocks, he eventually did pull over. A few corners later I went to make a tight turn in a wash and my steering completely locked up, we blew the corner and were off the track. I violently jerked my wheel a couple of times and the rock that was stuck somewhere broke loose. As I pulled back onto the track I noticed Burnett back on our tail. I hit the skinny pedal and tried to lose him. As we approached pit 3 we were coming down the hill in the 25MPH zone and I noticed Branden Sims taking fuel. His crew saw us and he pulled out right in front of us in the pits. Branden and I are long time friends so my co driver and I laughed it off and said some choice words about him LOL. At that point I knew it would be a drag race between the two of us. We gave our crew the thumbs up as our communications were out and we continued behind him. Once we got out of the speed zone, he floored it and lost us in the dust. Bold move on his part!! It wasn't until our scheduled stop at pit 4 that we saw Branden again. We pulled into pits and took fuel. We had a rear broken CV boot so our crew changed a left rear axle and we were off! From there we kept a reasonable speed through all of the different terrain and just made our own pace. We had no turns on our GPS for 70% of the race and zero communications to our crew. We had no idea what place we were running so we decided to keep a fair pace and hope to pick up some positions. Finally, as we were about 10 miles from the finish, we started to see dust. We thought maybe we could pass whoever was in front of it so we started to fly. The last 10 miles of the race we probably averaged 77 MPH. When we pulled in as the 2nd car physically we were stoked and knew that our corrected time would give us the lead over the 1913 of Sims. We however had no idea where the 3 or 4 cars that pulled in behind us had started. We were sweating for a few minutes before they announced the corrected times. Hearing our number as the first place car was awesome and we were stoked!! This race could have been anyones as all of the top contenders were only minutes apart. Im stoked to know that the pace we set ourselves with no communications was a winning pace! Thanks to Branden and all the other UTV racers for making this sport so much fun and keeping the competition so close! Congrats to all of the finishers! Also thanks to BITD and all of their volunteers for putting on such a great event! Good luck to all that are racing the Baja 500 and we will see everyone at V2R!!!
We started 23rd off the line right behind Schueler, not the best starting position but definitely not the worst! For the first 50 miles or so, I felt that I would just pace Schueler as they are always a top contender and I didn't want to get ahead of myself. Once I started to catch them and get close enough to pass, my co-dog and I decided we should go around. Schueler's co-driver waved his hand in the mirror that he saw us and we waited for them to pull off. Huge thanks to them for not making me tail them for miles to pull over, they acted as true sportsmen! we continued on and it seemed as if we were kind of out on our own. We passed a few broken cars and were still in a lot of dust, but couldn't see anyone's rear facing lights. As we pushed forward, we caught up to Marc Burnett. He made us work for the pass, and I honestly contemplated nerfing him as we were getting hit with tons of big rocks and followed for a long while with no sign of them noticing us, but rather than damage 2 cars we decided to take the rocks, he eventually did pull over. A few corners later I went to make a tight turn in a wash and my steering completely locked up, we blew the corner and were off the track. I violently jerked my wheel a couple of times and the rock that was stuck somewhere broke loose. As I pulled back onto the track I noticed Burnett back on our tail. I hit the skinny pedal and tried to lose him. As we approached pit 3 we were coming down the hill in the 25MPH zone and I noticed Branden Sims taking fuel. His crew saw us and he pulled out right in front of us in the pits. Branden and I are long time friends so my co driver and I laughed it off and said some choice words about him LOL. At that point I knew it would be a drag race between the two of us. We gave our crew the thumbs up as our communications were out and we continued behind him. Once we got out of the speed zone, he floored it and lost us in the dust. Bold move on his part!! It wasn't until our scheduled stop at pit 4 that we saw Branden again. We pulled into pits and took fuel. We had a rear broken CV boot so our crew changed a left rear axle and we were off! From there we kept a reasonable speed through all of the different terrain and just made our own pace. We had no turns on our GPS for 70% of the race and zero communications to our crew. We had no idea what place we were running so we decided to keep a fair pace and hope to pick up some positions. Finally, as we were about 10 miles from the finish, we started to see dust. We thought maybe we could pass whoever was in front of it so we started to fly. The last 10 miles of the race we probably averaged 77 MPH. When we pulled in as the 2nd car physically we were stoked and knew that our corrected time would give us the lead over the 1913 of Sims. We however had no idea where the 3 or 4 cars that pulled in behind us had started. We were sweating for a few minutes before they announced the corrected times. Hearing our number as the first place car was awesome and we were stoked!! This race could have been anyones as all of the top contenders were only minutes apart. Im stoked to know that the pace we set ourselves with no communications was a winning pace! Thanks to Branden and all the other UTV racers for making this sport so much fun and keeping the competition so close! Congrats to all of the finishers! Also thanks to BITD and all of their volunteers for putting on such a great event! Good luck to all that are racing the Baja 500 and we will see everyone at V2R!!!
