Now race day...
It was a beautiful morning, absolutely PERFECT for racing. With all the setbacks behind us, I was eager and ready to take to the course. Our plan was to take it easy, "save the car", and just have fun.
As we lined up prior to the race to start, we were able to just relax and have some good conversations with other racers near us. Small world, we were set to start off with Diezel from NC. He helped us out back in AOP in 21'. Again, just cool people to be affiliated with.
Once the green flag waved, it was all focus as we took the hole shot from him. Learning from our qualifying, we took it much easier in the big whoops and avoided the gotcha rock that kept killing everyone's driver side tires. Very quickly into the race, we were already passing other racers before Turkey Claw. With this speed, the car felt great, not really pushing at all. Once we got into TC, everyone was in a line leaving the middle open. I decided to take the middle lane and pass quite a few other racers in the rocks. Unfortunately, this led me turtled at the pinch rock. Once my co-dawg got out to winch, we realized we didn't have reverse. Immediately this killed the mood, and I knew my day wasn't going to be as fun as I hoped. Once we got through, we ripped a hole in a side wall killing our rear tire. In hopes to make quick work of our tire change, we found out that our impact wasn't on the car. Instead of driving 27 miles to remote pit 1, I decided to run back to main pit. Although not fun, I made it back and we changed the tire only to make it 50 yards killing another tire. At this point we had no choice to continue on at a slower speed. Shortly into our race, now by ourselves, we kept pulling over to broken down cars to see if they had a spare to loan. Much to our Suprise, we were able to get one and carry on with our race.
This is where this story ends tragically. Right around race mile 19, we hit a large gout at 65 sending us up and over, endoing the car. With a couple of flips the car stopped and thankfully both my co-driver and I were able to walk away with no issues. The car however did not have the same luck, but it saved our lives and for that I'm truly grateful.
Wasn't very long afterwards that race recovery showed up checking on us and helping us flip the car back over. Those guys were the real heroes as they dragged the car to powerline road allowing us the opportunity to get it back.
After a few phone calls to the loved ones and our team, we worked on the car. Assessing damage and evaluating our options, we decided to try and limp it back as best we could with all the damage it endured. Thankfully we were able to make our tire strap work to help support the rear and drive slowly back to the main road.
On the way back our guys came with more straps and a spare tire. Further down, we ran into another racer recovering his car. After a few laughs, he offered up his truck and trailer to us. He felt we needed it more than he did. Without hesitation, we loaded up the car and headed back to hammertown.
Without Ryan and his team, I think we would still be driving at 5mph to get the car back. In the end, we got the beat-up car back to camp and our KOH experience was over.
Now the teardown process will begin to make sure the chassis is ok and fix the broken undercarriage.
Regardless, I just want to thank all of our sponsors, supporters, friends, family members, and Irates that have helped along in this journey. Although broke, we're not broken, and we'll be back at the next one.