04/08/2025
Derek with D&D racing asked if I wanted to drive one day of the Southern Nevada Off Road Enthusiasts King Shocks Battle at Primm and of course I had to say yes. BAP is one of my favorite races and having not been there for the last two years, I really appreciate the opportunity Derek gave me to get back out there. I've never driven his car, but that wasn't an issue.
I drove the Saturday heat, electing for a rear start. Right away we had an issue on the starting line. The car stumbled on the launch and wouldnt get up and go until we were around the first corner. As we exited the short course, things seemed to smooth out and the car picked up speed, hitting over 90 on the first long straight. Great, I thought, we are back into it but then going into checkpoint 3 I overcooked it a bit, and with a wet course I ran a few feet off that left corner. We recovered quickly and on that next straight I was able to pass a car. I started to get comfortable and by the next long straight on the southeast section of the track, I had passed a total of 4 cars.
We continued to work our way up until the issues started to appear again. Coming into the hot pit the car stumbled and went into limp mode. I had to stop, shut off the car and wait about 10 seconds before starting it up again for it to go back into limp mode a second time. We got it going again but this wouldnt be the last time we ran into this issue. In fact, we hit limp mode 6 times throughout the race, costing us about 30secs each time and throwing me out of my groove. Outside of that, the race went pretty smooth with most other drivers being courteous and moving over when we caught them without the need to bump.
That was until the last lap. With a solid finish just half a lap away, we ran out of fuel on the back straight. The car stuttered, ran fine, then shut off completely. With a large berm to our right and a rocky section to the left, I pulled over as far as I could but stopped on the course. Calling in to SNORE ops and letting them know of the situation, they were able to get Scott, a veteran retrieval worker, over to our location and topped off with a couple gallons of fuel in about 10-12 minutes. Thanks Scott! We got back moving, and finished the race within time.
All in all, we finished 14th on day one, starting from 25th. Having lost somewhere between 12-15 minutes, I only wonder about where we could have ended up had we not ran into so many issues with the car. Top 5 perhaps? Not bad for not racing offroad in 2 years. I am going to check our camera timestamps and figure out the exact time lost.
Getting back to the pit, I noticed a large amount of black buildup on the rear number plate. Unburnt fuel. The car was running extremely rich which was causing fuel to ignite in the exhaust, causing the overboost and getting us less than 5MPG. The tune that was on the car was not working for us, so it was reflashed that night back to stock for Derek to take the wheel on Sunday.
See you all at the Dirt Shades Caliente 250
