I like your attitude towards this race, but either myself or you are being misinformed.... it's not just $400... the tracker is $275 and usac is $85 per person that climbs into car... plus, you need pit support if you want to win...hard to find willing, capable people to take the week off to help you instead of spectating. I'll tell you this though, I'm making arrangements to be at koh, I'm working on my car and have almost all safety items, just waiting to finish motor rebuild... I'll gladly sign up if it's only $400.... but I need a sponsor for the rest... I'll even make my "sponsor" a deal.... whatever percentage you pay towards cost, I'll give you back in winnings!!!
The USAC and IRC fees are static, while entry fees go up significantly in 3 days. USAC is actually $185 for a single race for the driver, $85 each for the codriver(s). IRC is $250 this year.
And lets me realistic the only reason the KOH course didn't do damage on your UTVs is bc you didn't come any where near finishing before timing out last year. KOH is brutal.
KOH *is* brutal. But no worse than half of the trails in moab.
Last year, I preran the entire course, 90% at race speed, and only broke one CV. During the actual race, I was fourth into pit 1, but I had to stop due to an IRC tracker problem. A lot of cars passed me here. When I got to the sand hill, I was down to about 20th. I worked my way back to 12th, but ended up having a fluke failure a mile from pit 2; A CV came apart and the end of the axle shaft impaled my tire, binding up the entire front end. Broke the other axle, and both tie rods because I was moving when this happened. I walked to the pits to get the parts, but gave up because I had no chance of winning anymore, and didn't feel like speed thrashing to repair my car just to finish outside of time. Had I not had the IRC issue? I would have had plenty of time to repair and finish. The pit stop hurt, but because I was passed I had to wait at the sand hill for a close to 40 minutes. That hurt, as did waiting at the start of aftershock.
The year before I finished no problem.
I'm just as hard on my UTV trail riding as I am at KOH. The parts and modifications to the car are mostly for reliability, not outright speed. That isn't to say it's bulletproof, because parts can always fail. But my point is that I don't see them as any more likely to fail at KOH than I do going up Moab Rim. And our night run up Moab Rim last year at ROTR had more than 25 UTV's involved. There were actually at least 4 KOH drivers on that run too, believe it or not.
It has nothing to do w UTV owners. There are millions of those out there. It has to do w UTV racers. There aren't that many out there in total. And to make KOH your first race would be tough.
KOH is a free for all. It isn't designed to pull in WORCS or BITD racers. And yes, a lot of people complain about cost, because it is more expensive than the average UTV race. However, in terms of racing? KOH in a UTV is cheap. CHEAP. You can buy a nearly race ready UTV for $7,000. You can buy a UTV capable of winning for under $25k.
Dave Cole isn't comparing his race fees with other UTV race fees. He doesn't care that his race costs more, because nothing else is like it. He sees a group of people with $25k cars, complaining about $1000 in entry/tracker/insurance costs, as well as everything else under the sun, and that class is poorly populated this year. Yet his premier class, 4400, has 100+ entries and cars that cost $100k plus that get rebuilt every year, and none of them complain at all. To put this in perspective, a pair of Spidertrax housings and Currie third members for a 4400 car costs $17,000+, before they even have tabs welded on. Go count how many of those you see on the lakebed this year. Running the 4400 race takes the same amount of work as running the UTV race. If 50+ UTV's lined up? This wouldn't be an issue. But with only 25? It's a big issue.
Which is why I'm trying to get more entries in. And it doesn't help when people who haven't raced KOH are incorrectly claiming that KOH will destroy a UTV.
