April 2, 2017
Let me tell you about this race. As soon as we finished the Baja 1000 in November, Dan Chamlee started building a new race truck. He’s been working until between midnight and 1am every day after putting in regular hours at the job that pays the bills. It’s been a big job, at times he was afraid it wouldn’t be ready in time but with the list short enough to put it in the trailer, we got some incredible winds at home blowing one of the fenders over a cliff by our house. I’m not sure we’ll ever find it, so we ran without a fender. We discovered a miss that would shut the motor off, still trying to diagnose that one. After tuning the shocks, we discovered cracks in the back half of the cage of the bed, after spending late into the night the day before the race welding it and reinforcing it, we felt confident the wasn’t going to break in half. However, this reinforcing appears to contradict the shock tuning, making the race a very rough course. By race mile 8, the engine shut off several times but Dan’s not a quitter and just kept going. Race mile 190, a Bolt came off the trailing arm but was able to be repaired. We are so grateful for those who helped make this happen. Kurt Kimball, Amy Tate Matthew Tindell, BFGoodrich Tires, Sunoco, The Factory Racing, Scott Patrick Brady, Karl Funk, Barry Brand, Danzio Performance Engineering, King Shocks. I’m really proud of this team.
