- Joined
- Jun 1, 2020
- Member Number
- 1745
- Messages
- 485
Been ridiculously busy with life and work, almost decided not to go at all but ended up going with all the kids and boozecruiser JK to just hang out and have fun. Ended up codriving for Ken in 4680 but we had a broken front axle and a poorly running motor so we just cruised around for a lap and called it a day before we hurt the truck any more (we knew the cheater broncos were going to destroy everybody) I was getting out in the staging lanes John Dicus (well known codawg and friend of mine) waved and said Andrew Gorman needed a codriver at the last second. Gorman is in the national points lead in 4800 and had a ton of tow rig issues driving over to Visions from LA and really hadn't gotten to prerun and did poorly qualifying. I walked over to check out the 4853 Jimmy's car and strapped in to make sure I fit properly. (pro tip: never, ever volunteer to codrive before checking that you SAFELY fit in the car) I fired up the Lowrance and realized he had never uploaded the map which was concerning since I knew from the race before that the dust was going to be a SERIOUS issue for at least a lap or two. Set the GPS up to track location and told Gorman we'd need to run a bit conservative until we had a good map to work off of which he agreed with. Starting I believe 23rd next to Rants we decided to try and keep up with them and hope they had a good map. Took the green and hung with Rants for quite some time until we got completely blanked out in the dust for about a half of a lap. If I hadn't already run the race course earlier in the morning we would have been screwed. Cars were already crashing into trees, rolling over, getting stuck, etc. We passed enough cars just in the first lap that I suspected we might be top 10 which Gorman had said he really wanted and if possible to be in front of Jeremy Jones. We never saw Jones the whole day (I believe he finished 4th or 5th) but we settled into a good rhythm knocking seconds off every lap. Car felt great the entire race so we were all over the throttle passing the pits every lap. The last lap got exciting as we caught Digby on the short course and I recommended we pass him before the knockout hill because the dust was bad from there all the way through the pits. Digby hung in there and we ended up going door to door up the knockout hill and passing him to get clean air and a fast run (I saw 75-78 mph on the GPS) past the pits. I felt like we were very competitive in the woods and I think if he would have had more practice in the short course we would have possibly made up some more ground but all in all, 23rd to 8th overall (7th in class) was something we were very pleased with.