SNORE Dusty Times 250 Race Report

This weekend has been awesome! We met Ted, Nick and Bill Moncure at the pits with Chris Livingston. After registration at the Knotty Pines Bar/Casino... I use the term casino very loosely, we got the truck through tech in less than an hour. I was hoping for a bigger Contingency Parade/Vendor Row, but what can you do. Shortly after, we had lasagna around a camp fire and shot the bull. Ted Moncure is the Product Development Manager for TRD. He actually designed the 4.0 Supercharger that we just installed on Ed Berrera's FJCruiser. Nick is the national sales manager for MBRP exhaust. Looks like Krawltex will be able to offer some great deals on both those product lines.

So in the morning, I hopped behind the wheel with Chris Livingston as my co-driver. He was a pro and eventually took over shifting as well as navigating for me. Unfortunately, we did not pre-run so we had to run about 70% to capture the course for everyone else. Luckily, SNORE did an incredible job marking the course with orange arrows. I slow paced it in the beginning to get a feel of the car. The steering has a 2:1 quick steer box and the brake bias had been set up for Baja, with more brake to the rear allowing the ass to slide. Unfortunately, I blew a turn and got the truck buried to the axle in a silt bed... avoiding the tree on my left and the ranch gate on the right. We dug for a while, then a back hoe came to our rescue. On we went, wasting about 15 minutes. When we hit the third water crossing, everything got soaked. Chris managed to turn the squelch down on the PA system and we motored through. The fourth water crossing was deeper, probably up to the rocker. This in turn soaked the ignition, but it cleared up after 10 miles of limping. Once I got a little more familiar with the steering in the twisty, technical section we opened it up and let her run.

The car sounds great with the Bassani exhaust. The rpms were solid all the way to the 6000 red line. The BFG Projects were unstoppable, besides my little driver error stuckage. 75 was fast as I felt comfortable taking the car. Later I would learn about the brake bias, which would have let me control it better on the high speed sweepers and rollers. But no big deal. Chris and I were still getting to trust each other, and I was just trying to cleanly finish my lap without wadding the car up. SNORE put on a great race with at least 40 miles of continuous high speed sections. A class 1 was on our ass and tried to take us for a ride, despite me pulling over. But such is racing. Like most hot head 1 car drivers, I don't think he finished.

After the first fire road section, it was a twisty section around a mountain top, through the trees, and on top of a mesa where one could stare all around the mountain valley... at 70 mph. Parts of it were very similar to rally racing terrain. But it also reminds me of the area around Mike's Sky Ranch in Baja. The view was incredible. We got through that section and then the last high speed. Some where amidst all of this, Chris and I were able to fall in to second place. The last 5 miles were absolute hell on a rookie driver. It started with a 1/4 mile of knee high whoops, followed by the next section of uphill whoops in a silt bed. I was able to feather the throttle and get us through it. By the way, the Toyota is 2wd. If you have ever heard of the infamous goat trail in Mexico, that's what the next section was similar to. Loose, rocky and off camper like a Jeep trail. I took the Toyota up and down the back bone of a mountain. The trail was a truck width. If you fell off the side, it would be a very bad day. At the bottom of the hill was the entrance to the pits.

I hopped out and Nick took the wheel with Ted (our Ted) as co-driver. Lap 2, they ripped it. Nick set up the brake bias, they were able to bypass a section of the water crossing, and they could fly now having GPS data. Of course, driver experience certainly helped. They were able to close the 15 minute gap between us and first place by the time they were charging down the main hill in to the pits.

Lap 3 was a driver change, no fuel. Ted Moncure hopped in the driver's seat and I took the other. We got through the first silt bed that had by now, been knocked way down from all the trophy trucks and 1 cars. At the fourth water crossing, we completely shorted the communications. We could talk to each other, but couldn't relay back to the pits. In the midle of all this, we let a truck pass. As soon as we did, we realized that was first in our class. Out of the pits, we had the hole shot but weren't aware of it. We were going to spend lap 3 realing him in. I looked over at Ted and said, "Well, I guess now we have a race." It was catch up time. We road his ass for the next 60 miles, eating a dust cloud you couldn't see the end of your hood through. Luckily, I had driven the course before. We were definitely using the force and the GPS blindly, through some of the turns. When we got to the high speed section, we made our move on the Ranger with the Icelinger race motor. It was wide open head to head. We road his bumper blaring on the horn. He blocked for several miles. We tried to pass on the high left several times until the road narrowed just to two car lengths wide. So we took him for a ride. Never bumped somebody at 75 mph, but it was text book. Ted knocked the Ranger's driver rear bed side with the front passenger corner of the Tacoma. Fiberglass and our head light went every where. It must have rattled his cage, because when we finished the race 20 miles later, the Ranger was 10 minutes behind us.

Krawltex Motorsports and Long Beach Racers won the Dusty Times 250 in Class 7S

Cam