After making the right improvements on the race car, we showed up more prepared than ever. In my opinion, judging by our speed, we had Top 4-9th place pace, which is not bad considering it’s Best In The Desert, with over 30 cars in our class. Of course, none of that matters as we didn’t prove it, as we barely made it more than a lap. I need to learn how to steer clear of slower cars and get around them more safely. We got hit and it ruined our race, but I learned that I really need to be more thoughtful, and give as much space as possible.

This was especially hard in Parker, as over 160 race cars on a 62-mile lap (due to COVID land closures) put about 3 cars per mile on every mile of the course. Luckily, we had the wind to help dramatically.

It’s hard to figure out passing safely, waiting, and if I hadn’t had the clutch issue, I wouldn’t have been dicing with slower cars in the first place. Getting through the first lap (or 25% of the race) I’ve learned is the single best thing I can do. People start breaking and the pace slows down, but it’s the first lap drama that ends a lot of people’s day. Missing an important item in prep, tangling with another driver, driving too hard, are all that cause a lot of teams to DNF (Did Not Finish).

I’m figuring out my pace and how that works with the competition, so it’s just a learning curve. I titled this series “So You Want to Go Racing?” and those words really echo after looking at my race car after this weekend.

But we tried our best to keep going after we were essentially taken out. Tough break, but we will be back stronger and faster for the next one.

Transcription:

Chupacabra off-road what’s happening got out of uh town what’s happening chupacabra off-road we uh left home right before the sun came up we’re leaving the valley and headed to uh parker parker 250s this weekend topping off the uh race jugs here dream come true first best in the desert race so brent and i are hoping to have a good action here make it happen get a top five the unlimited class try not to spill this gas all over myself like i already did i know i said top five but brent you want to win right we’re here to win pretty much all right we’re here in contingency waiting to get our car approved uh brent we’re ready to go we’re set we’re all ready here the day is here we’re finally gonna race the best of the desert race yeah dream come true for me to be able to race the best idea i’ve done a couple on a bike but never in a four-wheel car went out testing went over the car we’re gonna give it another final double check but she’s running nice and cool thanks to the new fan kit to bring installed new seats are comfortable we’re as prepared as i think we know how to be yeah i mean we’re yeah we set a goal for this after the utv worlds and uh we’re here to execute so i think there’s over 30 people in our class we’re we’re 11th draw so we’re going to start two vehicles every 30 seconds so we should probably be in the fifth row so hopefully we hold shot our other person on the line and get into the desert section in front of them because it’s real rocky right out of the gate yeah and you know we’re just gonna have to pace ourselves in the beginning kind of see where they’re at there’s a lot of cars there’s a lot of cars on the track so kind of see how the dust and the wind condition is and kind of make a game plan from there yeah so 62 63 mile loops four loops uh grand prix finish in case we lack them we’ll only do three but our plans to do four yeah then we’ve got the rally class behind us we’ll get like 150 cars we heard roughly on the track so yeah i think we might be catching some people if we have a good run yep it’s going to be you know awesome temperatures for tomorrow and hopefully there’s a little bit of wind to blow some of the dust away if not there’s some sections that the dust i believe is going to hang and make it difficult to pass or you know just get the you know bite our time through it yeah you know finally after we learned in testing the car runs really cool but it was a little high so we lowered it softened up the compression there’s a lot of fast slot car stuff some big roller jump stuff the car felt a little wonky up high so we lowered the front then we lowered the back so other than that i mean we think we’re ready to go we think we might do a a pit stop halfway through lap two andrew’s gonna be at midway hopefully we can get the car completely topped off and then hopefully do our second and final pit coming into the conclusion of lap three yep good i think that’s our plan and uh i’m looking forward to it can’t wait for tomorrow we do have extra bolts on the car from the one we pulled we broke not that it’s gonna happen but we did learn and we’re smarter so we think we’re ready to go on that i’ve got some fireproof gloves so even if one of these other guys romo’s lap us then we should still be able to get four we don’t know that but we’re gonna shoot and plant on four make sure they see you not that they see you because sometimes you just have to do what you have to do but passing is critical so just be careful with that okay thank you we don’t make it um so 2931 the main pit we just got hit by another driver we’re going to be limping into the pits please be ready with a right rear hub so it’s it’s gotta be around here’s this section of trail that ended our day we’re coming in you can see the pit over here we catch a rally guy and right here you can see for the first time in a couple miles you’ve got some lines you really kind of have four lines the rally guy we catch darts far left definitely a good line smoother but we had a car length on them and we came together see he’s going left too you can see the left line still these loops are just kind of faced the wrong direction so it makes your car kick and we were right here just the inside of this pucker bush when we came together he hits us even though we for sure had a car length on them car goes sideways and we break the right rear up we go into the pits we’re actually walking around here because we’re looking for our spare tires we lost our spare and our wheel and we’re thinking this camera guy might have we made it in before dark thanks to brent okay we’re done forward i think you know after he hit us it broke the hub right remember we came in we put it back together with us the front yeah the trailing arms tweaked right here i mean i think everything was compromised yeah i think the two miles out here completely pulled out wide and we go even though we got it going i think it just compromised the the outer heim um and something let go like right as we got going i’m like brent it’s like turning off to the side a little bit and you know we weren’t even a mile out we were like we could almost see you guys yeah yeah yeah and then finally brent’s like let’s come up with an idea and one of the guys helped us with the high lift and we got it yeah i couldn’t get high enough with i like i know i can get the jack in here and get it out that jack the coarse guy had a high lift so we got it up ratchet straps well we made it back to camp luckily before the sun went down thanks to brent um we had a long day even though we only made a little bit more than one lap unfortunately so starting off uh we’re running good 11th place start we were we’re going pretty good um beat the person in our line caught some dust immediately we were just kind of checking the belt temperature going up that wash the bell started to get hotter and hotter and hotter well mile marker 20 the secondary bolt backed out and it backed out and it ate the outer cover which was a bizarre i’ve seen it happen one time it was totally my fault luckily we didn’t lose any of the washers we didn’t the bolt didn’t break so we put it back in took the cover off we lost eight or ten minutes yeah real quick change luckily we got pulled off at a safe spot it happened like right after we crossed the um water canal yes and it was in this part of the trail and we felt the belt going we were just cruising we would have caused the biggest pile up for the whole race yeah we were able to get off somewhat safely got that going car was running great belt temps were super low after that yeah it was great i mean even the so on a positive note of that the belt temps and the radiator were phenomenal today so that was positive our car never got above 185 no never which is a huge huge deal for us so yeah once that sorted out the belt was good everything was humming a bunch of rally guys back past us non-turbo guys we just started catching them reeling them in getting dust catch somebody else back section was super flowy and fast car was a little bit too low to the ground i thought it was a little bit too soft as well um but nothing big deal just personal mole change for next time yeah and as we’re coming into the last finish line here we um we caught a rally class guy the trail opened up he went left we went straight he had a smoother line we had bigger bumps so we had a straight shot came together he hit us we went sideways put all the load on the passenger side rear yeah broke a hub luckily we were in that soft sand because otherwise it would have caught and probably took us over we were behind him on the horn for miles like yeah we thought he pulled over for us to go by and we were ahead so i don’t you know so once that happened we macgyvered two tires on the back and went through the whole pit area on three wheels we get stuck twice in the pit around soft silty turns we finally get to the pit buddy has a an extra rear huh hub of course the the bearing’s blown out right we pinch off the brake because we broke a brake caliper like we’re just gonna cruise let’s get to the fin get a couple more laps in yeah and then a mile outside you know we had also done more damage the yeah the radius rod one of the um heim sheared and then the and the rear bent the lower shock broke and then you guys know from there we were done and then i had to do some creative engineering the strap was ratchet straps and got us back here to the pit you know american creative engineering yes american creative engineering we lost both the tires too going to pit when we walked all the way through the desert we found one of our two tires maybe somebody else if you guys see one silver method this is what she looks like hit us up we need it yeah we have a lot of money to spend repairs for this one we had a good pace uh the course was really fun everyone says parker’s a really fun race i i understand why it really wasn’t that rough i’m sure it’s nasty now laps three at four guys that we saw in the desert were just creeping so the more i get into this more i learn like first lap doesn’t matter just stay steady yeah and keep it moving right and you’re gonna do really well so i’m curious to hear what the attrition rate is yeah i mean we we were we weren’t pushing at the first lap and you know and we were we were being smart and passing guys in good sections and everything and and we were starting to get our rhythm and our groove and i mean personally we kind of feel like there’s a lot of people on the course the rally guys they there’s so many of them not saying it needs to be rally but some of those should have gone in the morning or tomorrow yeah they just but they need to split things up or us unlimited guys there’s 30 35 of us yeah whoever i’m not calling out one class or another but i think yeah there’s a lot of racers that lap yep i agree thanks for watching guys i’ll probably do another little follow up i’ll reflect on it like i always do and then we’ll come back and we’ll figure out how to get this thing back together and strong for the next one so thanks for watching if you guys like the content please like and subscribe we’ve got a lot more coming your way