UTV INC Best in the Desert Blue Water Challenge Race Report
Well we headed out for the race Thursday afternoon from Mesa Arizona. Truck, trailer, Polaris RZR XP 1000 Racer and my Polaris RZR XP 1000 duner in the trailer. We landed in Parker just after dark and found a comfortable camp/parking spot. We started to unload the truck and trailer when we noticed the whole area that they set aside for us was covered in the nastiest little stickers. We call them Goat Head Stickers and it was bad. They covered everything shoes, tires, floor mats, everything. Anyway, Friday was contingency day in the Casino parking lot and around 11am we headed over and rolled thru contingency row. It took about three hours to get to the end and I’m not really sure why I have to go through since I do not partake in contingency money? I guess it is part of the show…
Anyhoo, at the end of contingency is where the check your tracker on the car and do your tech inspection on your racecar. Well for the week before the race I was thinking; ‘I am starting second to last and it’s a short race, only 75 miles a day on Saturday and Sunday. So I need to show up ready to drive my butt off and win, no taking it easy here.’ So I go to bed early and my alarm wakes me up at 5am. Quick shower and race suit goes on as I head out to the RZR. We need to line up at 5:45 because the start is at 6:30. Everything is good and we are off and running! 20 UTVs ahead of us to catch. I mash the gas and give it all I got. Its dusty but we start catching people pretty fast and everything is going really well, even though it’s a really rough course. There is huge bumps that throw the back of our car up in the air repeatedly.
We finish the first lap and we are hauling the mail. We have the 4th fastest lap time out of the group. So off into the second lap we go, we are kicking butt about ¾ of the way around the second lap. We get into some heavy dust and hit a large washed out section way to fast and the back of the car flies up in the air and I end up with the car laying on its side. Nothing broken. Because it is such a bad section of the course they have workers there just in case somebody does just what I did. It does not take but a couple minutes for them to hook up the tow strap and pull my RZR over. My co-driver was already out of the car, so I started it up while he gave it a quick once over and we are back in the race in less than 5 minutes. Well it wasn’t a bad wreck so I wasn’t feeling worried about mashing the go pedal back to the floor board. So we were back in the race and hauling butt again through the infield of the race course with one lap to go. I was feeling really good about a strong finish when something from the back of the car started making a clanking noise. I pulled over and Craig Jumped out of the car and found our rear wheel bearing had failed. Whether because of the earlier crash or just the race abuse it had taken it was done.
We called our chase truck and had Perry get us a new hub, spindle and axle to fix the car. Low and behold, as luck would have it, after installing the spindle we found out it was for a Polaris RZR 900 model not the 1000 model we needed. It was the only one I had on the truck, so I headed over to the pits knowing that one of the other racers would have one and be willing to loan it to us. We are racing with a pretty great group of guys that go out of the way to help when you ask. Sure enough Dan from Lone Star Racing had one and gave it to us no questions asked. We hauled back over to my RZR and got it installed, but it was just a couple minutes after the next race started and they wouldn’t let us back on the race course.
Sunday, day 2. We race again, same thing but I’m up at 3AM. I can’t sleep, oh well, I know today the race course is going to be a lot rougher today. 160 other racers raced the same course as we did and they all did three laps around it. So we are off again but taking it a little easier because I didn’t finish the first race so I wasn’t really racing for a top finishing spot. We are moving pretty good but we bottom out hard a couple of times due to the course being a lot rougher then the day before. The car starts making a horrible grinding and clanking sound when I let off the gas. I tell Craig my co-driver to get ready to jump out of the RZR and look the car over. He does, everything looks fine, so he jumps back in and we continue on with the car making the same noise every time I let off the gas. Speaking of gas, about 15 miles thru the first lap I start smelling gas, NOT GOOD! As I look at our two Fire Extinguishers and think to myself ‘fire, burns, etc.’ and I think it must be somebody in front of us with a fuel leak. In the back of my mind I am thinking ‘how fast can I get out of the car if it is on fire’. I am looking in my rear view mirror for fire or smoke. We keep racing and are doing pretty good but still getting the gas smell once in a while. After 56 miles into the race the car shuts down. So I pull off the track thinking we just ran out of gas, but we should have had plenty to finish the race. I jump out of the car and tell Craig to get out and get the fire extinguisher ready just in case. Right away I notice we had a tiny crack in our fuel fitting that must have been leaking the whole time! We call our race support crew and tell them we are out of the race and to please send somebody to tow us back to the pits. They tow us back to camp and our day is over. 2 short races and we don’t finish either. After over 1500 of pretty much trouble free race miles this weekend is a bust. But, that’s racing, stuff happens. If you want win against the guys I am racing with you have to go fast and hard or don’t even think about a top 10 finish.
What I learned was a bad day of racing is still better than a good day at work …
Well we headed out for the race Thursday afternoon from Mesa Arizona. Truck, trailer, Polaris RZR XP 1000 Racer and my Polaris RZR XP 1000 duner in the trailer. We landed in Parker just after dark and found a comfortable camp/parking spot. We started to unload the truck and trailer when we noticed the whole area that they set aside for us was covered in the nastiest little stickers. We call them Goat Head Stickers and it was bad. They covered everything shoes, tires, floor mats, everything. Anyway, Friday was contingency day in the Casino parking lot and around 11am we headed over and rolled thru contingency row. It took about three hours to get to the end and I’m not really sure why I have to go through since I do not partake in contingency money? I guess it is part of the show…
Anyhoo, at the end of contingency is where the check your tracker on the car and do your tech inspection on your racecar. Well for the week before the race I was thinking; ‘I am starting second to last and it’s a short race, only 75 miles a day on Saturday and Sunday. So I need to show up ready to drive my butt off and win, no taking it easy here.’ So I go to bed early and my alarm wakes me up at 5am. Quick shower and race suit goes on as I head out to the RZR. We need to line up at 5:45 because the start is at 6:30. Everything is good and we are off and running! 20 UTVs ahead of us to catch. I mash the gas and give it all I got. Its dusty but we start catching people pretty fast and everything is going really well, even though it’s a really rough course. There is huge bumps that throw the back of our car up in the air repeatedly.
We finish the first lap and we are hauling the mail. We have the 4th fastest lap time out of the group. So off into the second lap we go, we are kicking butt about ¾ of the way around the second lap. We get into some heavy dust and hit a large washed out section way to fast and the back of the car flies up in the air and I end up with the car laying on its side. Nothing broken. Because it is such a bad section of the course they have workers there just in case somebody does just what I did. It does not take but a couple minutes for them to hook up the tow strap and pull my RZR over. My co-driver was already out of the car, so I started it up while he gave it a quick once over and we are back in the race in less than 5 minutes. Well it wasn’t a bad wreck so I wasn’t feeling worried about mashing the go pedal back to the floor board. So we were back in the race and hauling butt again through the infield of the race course with one lap to go. I was feeling really good about a strong finish when something from the back of the car started making a clanking noise. I pulled over and Craig Jumped out of the car and found our rear wheel bearing had failed. Whether because of the earlier crash or just the race abuse it had taken it was done.
We called our chase truck and had Perry get us a new hub, spindle and axle to fix the car. Low and behold, as luck would have it, after installing the spindle we found out it was for a Polaris RZR 900 model not the 1000 model we needed. It was the only one I had on the truck, so I headed over to the pits knowing that one of the other racers would have one and be willing to loan it to us. We are racing with a pretty great group of guys that go out of the way to help when you ask. Sure enough Dan from Lone Star Racing had one and gave it to us no questions asked. We hauled back over to my RZR and got it installed, but it was just a couple minutes after the next race started and they wouldn’t let us back on the race course.
Sunday, day 2. We race again, same thing but I’m up at 3AM. I can’t sleep, oh well, I know today the race course is going to be a lot rougher today. 160 other racers raced the same course as we did and they all did three laps around it. So we are off again but taking it a little easier because I didn’t finish the first race so I wasn’t really racing for a top finishing spot. We are moving pretty good but we bottom out hard a couple of times due to the course being a lot rougher then the day before. The car starts making a horrible grinding and clanking sound when I let off the gas. I tell Craig my co-driver to get ready to jump out of the RZR and look the car over. He does, everything looks fine, so he jumps back in and we continue on with the car making the same noise every time I let off the gas. Speaking of gas, about 15 miles thru the first lap I start smelling gas, NOT GOOD! As I look at our two Fire Extinguishers and think to myself ‘fire, burns, etc.’ and I think it must be somebody in front of us with a fuel leak. In the back of my mind I am thinking ‘how fast can I get out of the car if it is on fire’. I am looking in my rear view mirror for fire or smoke. We keep racing and are doing pretty good but still getting the gas smell once in a while. After 56 miles into the race the car shuts down. So I pull off the track thinking we just ran out of gas, but we should have had plenty to finish the race. I jump out of the car and tell Craig to get out and get the fire extinguisher ready just in case. Right away I notice we had a tiny crack in our fuel fitting that must have been leaking the whole time! We call our race support crew and tell them we are out of the race and to please send somebody to tow us back to the pits. They tow us back to camp and our day is over. 2 short races and we don’t finish either. After over 1500 of pretty much trouble free race miles this weekend is a bust. But, that’s racing, stuff happens. If you want win against the guys I am racing with you have to go fast and hard or don’t even think about a top 10 finish.
What I learned was a bad day of racing is still better than a good day at work …
