Mesquite, NV – My team and I headed out on Friday morning and arrived at Mesquite MX that afternoon. I got my pit set up, checked in at registration, and then headed to practice. The track was set up opposite of what we usually run, but after a few practice laps, I had a good feel for the track. After wrapping up practice, I ran my car through tech and closed up for the night.
I arrived back at the track on Saturday morning and helped my RZR 170 buddies with their races. Then, I did some final prep on my car to get ready for my race that afternoon. The SXS Pro Stock class was the last race on Saturday, and when it was time, I went to the start line.
There were 8 cars in my class, and we were starting on two rows. I lined up on row two and waited for the green flag to fly. Row one took off, and two minutes later, our flag flew! I got the hole shot on my row and took off on to the course! I was running a great pace right out of the gate and was able to put some distance between my car and the rest of the pack. After coming through the timing chute, I was running in the top 3 on corrected time. I picked up the pace where I could and by lap two, I was running in P1! The course was rough, but my car was handling it well. Unfortunately, there was a yellow flag that stopped us during lap three, so I lost some time and had fallen back to P3. I was confident that I could make up that time and kept pushing hard.
Then, my car went into limp mode. I quickly figured out that it was overheating. I limped my car around the track, pulling over several times waiting for it to cool down. I was able to make it to the pits where my pit crew could see that there was mechanical failure with my primary radiator fan. The secondary fan was working, but it is designed to work intermittently only when the motor gets to 220°. We made the decision to carry on with the race to salvage a finish and some points. In the end, I crossed the finish line in 6th place.
There have been some changes made to my schedule and now I am prepping for the final two rounds of the WORCS season running the last weekend in October. The Outlaw Series West moved their October round 3 race and created a double header in November. I am grateful for the extra prep time and will be heading into the WORCS rounds strong!