Laughlin, Nevada January 17, 2010: Racers Only Motorsports went into The Laughlin Desert Challenge seeking its 3rd straight win at the event. With only 36 miles of racing each day, it would turn out to be much tougher than expected.
Friday: Pete VanRooy and Matt Clayton would push the race car through contingency and tech inspection, then head back over to the pits to get the car ready for the Laughlin Leap event. On the way back to the pits they noticed the radiator fans quit working. With an hour to go before the start of the event, Pete and Matt went head first into the electrical problem. The culprit turned out to be a bad wire that had ground out on the chassis. Once the car was fixed it was off to get in line for the leap. As we lined up to take our turn at the leap, the car was loading up horribly. The green flag dropped for our turn and the race car did not want to go over 45 mph. We pulled off the course and ran it around in the infield and that seemed to clear out the motor….so we thought. Our first attempt would net us 72’ but the car would not go over 70mph without cutting out. We would find out later it was a slightly damaged alternator hindering the performance of the motor.
Saturday: Mike Lindquist from Wide Open MRI would co-ride this race after missing his ride at the Baja 1000. The race started at approx 7:10am and we were off. We caught Peter Lang (#1400) at race mile 3 and were running in second place, trying to keep a good easy pace. #1402, Mark Weyhrich was leading but pulled into the pits, possibly adjusting the suspension on his car which in turn put us first on the road. Right before the end of the 5th lap, the transmission in the race car started slipping and leaking fluid badly. We limped the car around on the last lap and still finished first.
Sunday: With no spare transmission lying around the shop, Racers Only motorsports was forced to try and make a damaged transmission live for another 36 miles. After pouring a bottle of “LUCAS trans stop leak” in the trans, we started the race alongside Peter Lang on day 2. All we had to do was finish since Lang had shock problems the day before and was unable to finish. To add insult to injury, co-rider Lindsey Ward developed a bad case of the flu the night before and was unable to ride. Right off the start, Lang pulled us off the line as our trans was still slipping badly and unable to get over 45mph in the first mile. Miraculously, the transmission started working better and better as the race wore on. We stopped in the pits the first 3 laps to check the fluid in the trans and added a quart on lap 3, all the time keeping close to Lang on the track. By lap 4 we were running at 100% and decided we would chase down the #1400 of Lang. We caught and passed him on the last lap and finished in 1st place for the 3rd year in a row.
A huge thanks goes out to my crew (Pete Corwin, Matt/Jacob Bare, Pete VanRooy, Matt Clayton and Mario Gutierrez) for all the hard work they put in to get the race car ready for this event. Dr. Blake Stamper from Tri State CareFlight and Mike, Kim and Jason from Wide Open MRI really helped us out with sponsorship once again and their support got us to the finish line in 1st place.
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