Another win for the TT Killer!

Laughlin, NV – January 25, 2009: The 2009 SCORE off road series got underway in Laughlin Nevada this past weekend with 2 full days of racing. On the banks of the beautiful Colorado River, Laughlin is one of the favorite races on the SCORE schedule with plenty of racing action in one of Nevada’s favorite gambling towns. The weather couldn’t have been better and Racers Only Motorsports got the season off right with its 2nd straight Laughlin Desert Challenge win.

The race started early Saturday morning with no dust what-so-ever after a steady drizzle the night before. Roberts Kukainis, the BFGoodrich motorsports manager would be my co-pilot for the day and did an outstanding job. Roberts pointed the way as we finished 2nd on day 1, only 2 ½ minutes out of 1st. Attrition is always high in Laughlin so we decided to play it cautious knowing that the race would not be won on Saturday, but surviving on Sunday.

Going into the Sunday race, Long time friend Chuck Soper would ride along side as our race plan was the same as Saturday…survive. Drag racing off the start with the 1st place finisher on Saturday (#1403), we kept him in sight for most of the race until the water temp started creeping up to an uncomfortable level. We backed it down a little but kept on the pressure. Low and behold, on the last lap we found 1403 stopped on the side of the course with a motor problem. Our race strategy would pay off with ANOTHER Laughlin win!

I had 2 guys work their butts off for me this week, Pete VanRooy and Matt Bare. They went over the car with a fine tooth comb and found a couple minor problems after Saturday’s race that could have become BIG problems if not corrected for Sunday! Thanks guys.

Huge thanks AGAIN to my sponsors that stepped it up in 2009 to help us go racing: Herb Hess @ JET JOC, Dr. Stamper @ Tri-state CareFlight, Jason, Kim and Mike @ Wide Open MRI, BFGoodrich Tires, Ironclad, Beard, C&R, MSD, Vision X, Butch’s speed shop, Artistic Curbing, Got Sand? and KING shocks. I’d also like to thank the rest of the crew that helped out before the race, Pete Corwin, Chuck Soper and Ted Ward. Tracy, Lindsey and Hanna ran the Racers Only booth all weekend and I definitely could not have done it without them! Next, the Parker 425 in 2 weeks…….see you their!

Remembering Dave "Big Deal"

October 14, 2008 is a day I will always remember. Dave Deal, also known as "Big Deal" passed away on this day after fighting some health problems. When I was a kid growing up, I'd go through my dads collection of Hot VW's magazines and always be fascinated with the Jackman Wheels ads. I would take the magazines to school and would try to "re-draw" them, with no luck mind you, usually during Math class. Over the years my drawing skills improved and was told on numerous occasions that my work looked a lot like Big Deals stuff, a HUGE compliment. In 2001, I saw an ad in a magazine for "Big Deal, commercial Illustrator". I called the number and Dave answered the phone. He was very pleasant to talk to and I told him I was a big fan. I asked If I could e-mail him some of my work so he could critique it. No problem he said, and within 20 minutes Dave gave me more pointers about style and contrast then any art teacher had ever done for me in my whole life. That same year, I met Dave at his house in Vista, he showed me around, went through some old "original" prints he had done over the years and then, kinda gave me the once over and said, "you wanna see something I've been working on?" He opens up the bottom drawer of his drawing cabinet and pulls out a stack of 11x17 art paper with sketches of numerous cars. It was the original sketches for characters for the movie "Cars" produced by Pixar. Very cool stuff and I was fortunate to see them long before the public did. We spent most of the day together, he drove me down the street in his Blue Baja bug to his favorite Mexican place and I bought him lunch and a couple beers. The last time I saw Dave was at the 2003 or 2004 Baja 1000 driving his Meyers Manx down the main street in Ensenada. It was November, chilly and almost dusk when I saw this Manx driving slowly down the street with a bearded man up on the wheel with a smile on his face. He had told me he was going and was bringing some friends from New York with him and they would watch the race from San Felipe. I thought to myself, "He's gotta be freezing his ass off!!" Dave and I stayed in touch over the years via e-mail and was usually pretty good about forwarding me stuff about his political beliefs... funny guy. In early August of this year, I e-mailed Dave and told him I was ready to have him do a painting for me so I could say that I had my own personal Dave Deal design. I sent him some pictures of my race car and he said he would get to it after he did some stuff for Pixar, they were doing "Cars 2" I guess. Early October I got an e-mail, it was Dave saying he was sorry he hadn't gotten my design done, he had been in the hospital for the last 8 days and was not feeling too well. I told him not too worry about my design and just get better. On October 15th, I went to my favorite off road web site, and in the forums someone posted that Dave had passed away the day before. It was a dark day for me, a true legend was gone. I went to the viewing a couple days ago and as I write this today, Dave is being layed to earth. It was nice to listen to his friends talk of him, the Dave I didn't know. It was a celebration of his life and I think he would have enjoyed himself....now that I think about it, I'm sure he did. God speed Dave, Travel well.

Racers Only Artwork

In order to go racing, we have to pay the bills. Here are a couple of newer designs we have done for our clients over the last month or so.....enjoy!

The Trophy Truck Killer

Jim Baldwin (CORR CEO) ordered another Chenowth DR2V chassis in the late 80's for his race team. Before the car was finished, the car was sold to Butch Dean so he could build Michael Gaughan (Owner of the Barbary Coast and GoldCoast casino's) a new class 1 race car. The car featured 3.0 Kuster coilover shocks on all 4 corners, unheard of at the time because those shocks were only for trucks. Bruce Fraley and Eddie Webb did a lot of the design work to fit the huge shocks to the Chenowth chassis.
Glenn Harris was the original driver during the 1990 season, with NASCAR Craftsman truck driver, Brendan Gaughan (Michael's son) as co-driver. The 1991 season saw Jack Johnson race the car a couple races with Pat Dean finally taking over the driving duties for good.
1993 was the break through season for this car with an Overall win at the HDRA GoldCoast 300, beating the supposedly faster factory teams like Toyota, Chevy, Ford and Dodge. SCORE created the Trophy Truck class in 1994, marketed as the "Elite" class of the SCORE series. That same year, Pat would go on to win the San Felipe 250 and the Baja 500 (later disqualified for an on track infraction) Overall much to the chagrin of the Trophy Truck teams. From that moment on, the Chenowth was affectionately known as "The Trophy Truck Killer".

Racers Only Motorsports

In October of 2006 we purchased Pat Deans "Trophy Truck Killer" and began a ground up rebuild that took approx 11 months. A lot of hard work, late nights and MANY paychecks later, the race car was ready for it's debut at the 2007 SCORE PRIMM 300 off road race. Basically the same car Pat Dean raced to many Overall wins in the early to mid 90's, the "TT Killer" never missed a beat en route to a first place win in it's inaugural race under the Racers Only Motorsports banner. 1 pit stop at the half way mark for 11 gallons of fuel and a quick look over was only stop made during the 3:31:05 Odessy across the rugged Nevada desert with a 40.93 mph average.
The pit crew consisted of Pete and Randy Corwin, Pete VanRooy, Matt Bare, Ed Crawford, Mike King and Jason Cyrus at the main pit. Chase 1 was Dusty and Macrae Glass with Chase 2 consisting of Eric Record and friends. It was nice to know those guys were out there in the outlying pits but we were fortunate enough not to have to stop.
A big thanks to all of our sponsors who got us to the finish line in first place: JET JOC, Wide Open MRI, BFGoodrich, Beard seats, C&R Racing, Butch's speed shop, King, Vision X, MSD, Comfort-Air Technologies and Artistic Curbing.