The Factory racing traveled to the 14th annual Laughlin Desert Challenge January 21-25, 2009 with revenge on their mind. After last years bittersweet first place finish but no one in class was able to finish the course in the allotted time and receiving a DNF.
Thursday was the famous Laughlin Leap; the jump was reworked from last year giving the trucks a bigger jump. The factory racing jumped 108 feet to place 4th.
This year’s racecourse was a 6-mile loop with 6 laps on Saturday and 6 laps on Sunday on some of the roughest terrain you can imagine. Saturday Dan Chamlee placed third in 54 minutes only 1 minute behind 2nd and 2 minutes behind 1st.
Sunday, Dan’s biggest concern was finishing and not having a DNF for the first race of the season. The two leaders from Saturday took an early lead on the first lap. The crew knew that they would battle hard and possible take each other out of the race. Sure enough during the 2nd lap one broke, and Dan passed the other one. Another competitor, who DNF’d on Saturday, took the lead but was not in contention for the overall. Dan battled between second and third for the remaining laps. On the final lap the overall leader pulled into the pits giving Dan the win. He completed Sunday in 57:01 minutes with a combined time of 1:51:01 with an average speed of 40.5 mph. BF Goodrich had lined Dan up with some mud terrain tires and inner liners that gave him the traction he needed to keep up the fast pace and the win. Thomas Chamlee was Dan’s co-driver for Saturday and Daniel Chamlee was his co-driver on Sunday.
Now the team is back to the shop to prepare the truck for it’s next adventure in San Felipe in March. The factory racing would like to thank its sponsors for the support. BF Goodrich, Super Six Motorsport, KMC, Tubeworks, Simple Digital Systems, The Factory Appliance, Inc.