Well, it's not a pic or vid but, I just read the following FB post written by Tony Pellegrino and thought it was worthy of sharing here...
For those of you who followed me in the King of the Hammers race last Friday, here is what happened:
I got my copy of the race course first thing Friday morning 2/1/13. This years course consisted of 3 loops totaling 185 miles (this was 60 more miles than any previous years race). The 1st loop was 54 miles of the worse desert whoops! The 2nd loop was some desert but mostly the tough Hammer trails and the 3rd lap was the same as the 2nd but included Spooners and Outer Limits (when you are tired and your car is beat)! I suited up and went out for a trip in the race car…
I was able to pre-run the entire race course plus this years Qualifier/Time Trial course which was a short 3 mile course, that included a new obstacle they were calling “Front Door”.
Our time trial was Tuesday mid day. My goal was for a good clean run to post a solid time! A lot of racers were coming in from their time trial run on flat tires or broken wheels. I did not want that! We got in a good clean run and we sat in 4th overall for most of the day. However a big rock moved toward the end of the day which made the course 20 seconds faster.
In the end, we started 41st off the line in Fridays big race– which was fine with me (as that is where we started 2 years ago when we got 2nd). Besides I knew that meant we would be grouped with cars off the start that I knew we were faster than.
My race car was good and team was confident! So confident that Darren & the other team guys even had time to work on other small but important details.
Race morning (Friday 2/8/13) the nice weather was gone, it was cold and windy with a chance of rain and snow! Darren had the car in line and warming up, as Bryan and I jumped in on the starting line. This years start was weird, around a corner. The outside line was a disadvantage.
Right off the start the car felt loose to me. I think the shocks were still cold. But that did not prevent us from passing 2 cars in the first 3 miles, I looked over at the GPS and noticed we were going over 100 as we passed guys to stay out of their dust over on Melville Dry Lake. Then with the momentum we passed 2 more in the next 2 miles. The engine was running strong and we were faster than most. When we pre-ran we mapped out this area so we knew all the paths through this area.
By mile 48 we were in physical 10th! And a few miles later as we came into main pit (end of lap 1) we were in physical 6th place! We pitted and peeled out for lap 2! This meant with our start time adjustment we were running in the front!
Now it was onto the tough Hammer trails! Lap 2 was pretty smooth for us, but the steering was getting worse… When we got to Aftershock Gary Faravanti was sideways in the Z turn so we had to take the sketchy off camber side hill line (that I had never run before). I did not even know if it was possible in our car… Bryan spotted me and we were thru in a flash! Beyond that Chocolate Thunder was tough, someone moved the big rock so it took me several teeter attempts to get thru the gate keeper and we were off to finish the second lap!
On our 3rd lap – right as we left the main pit another car shot out 10 seconds ahead of us, it was Chicky Barton. So as we approached Back Door he was stuck in front of us! Bryan hopped out to help him get out of our way before he broke or rolled over on top of us! We got him up and we worked our way up and over Resolution where we saw Kevin Sacalas, broke and out of the race!
We raced back across the desert and was just starting to feel like I was in the groove. Bryan had just told me we had a long left hand corner “hit it” on the inside! When BAM we rolled at mile 93 right in front of our video crew. We got rolled back over quickly and probably only lost 5 minutes. As we took off, Bryan tells me hey take it easy – make sure everything works ok before you really go fast again. That is when I noticed the rear shocks were working better!
Lap 3 included Spooners & Outer Limits! About half way up Spooners we got stuck. I could not understand what the problem was… so Bryan got out to see what was going on. We had a rear flat tire. By then Eric Miller caught us and tried to push us thru the obstacle (which I was fine with). We then pulled up a little and changed the tire. 3 cars got by us while changing the tire, including Ben Napier and Bill Baird. But we caught Bill Baird at the top of Outer Limits and chased him across the desert and up thru Sunbonnett where Bryan had to get out and spot him thru the middle line at the trail entrance. There were broken rigs in every possible line. Ben Napier had flopped it attempting the far left line. This was great, as we made up all the guys that passed us while we were changing the flat tire!
Finally we caught Chicky Barton in 3rd place. We almost rolled coming out of Sunbonnett chasing down Chicky. After I saved it, Bryan says to me, that was fun, lets not do it again! Honestly we almost rolled so many times I lost count!
We had just passed Bill Beard on HWY19/20 and the pass side wheel snapped off and could be seen in front of the car!!! Bryan yelled stop. Hopped out and said shut if off we are done… I radioed in and told the crew what happened. Got out of the car and saw the axle housing buried down in the dirt… the shaft had slid out (in the dirt) and fluid was pouring out!
Right about then, Bill Beard caught us. We were in the middle of the trail, so I had to spot him by so he would not injure our car any more.
This is one of the worst type of breaks! You must repair the car in place before you can even tow it!!!
I radioed to our crew – do we have a spare? Yes! I thought to myself OK lets do this and finish this race!
Bryan immediately got going and hiked/ran 2 miles out of the canyon and over to pit 2 for parts and tools. Meantime I started the process to tear down the car. It was in a bad spot with all the weight on the pass side corner. So I stacked rocks under the lower control arm and backed the car up in 3 wheel drive to get it a little more level for us to work on.
By now other cars had started to catch us. I could hear them coming up the canyon. To get to the jack I had to remove the spare tire. As I slid the tire off the back of the car it got away from me and rolled several hundred feet down the canyon – oh well, we will deal with that later! I got the jack and pulled the tools from under the car. I must of jacked the car 12 or so times stacking rocks and repositioning the jack under the axle so we could get the new parts on the front axle.
I got the knuckle disassembled and here comes Bryan. As he walks up, he asks me to help him get the back pack off so it does not take him down! It was heavy! It almost took me down!
Fortunately Bryan came back with headlamps because we were now re-assembling the car in the dark.
We limped the car into the pit with no brakes in the dark. I was SUPER happy to see the guys at pit 2! Bryan and I were already cold… it was 6:30pm, I saw 10 of our crew working feverishly on the car. I told them to not trust anything we did, it was only a band aid to get us into the pit. They fed us some food and built us a fire to keep warm and were back in the car by 7:30pm.
Now the idea was to finish – we only had 35 miles to go! It was dark, hard to see. I was taking it real easy. We got across Fischer, down Jack Hammer, thru Chocolate Thunder and into Wrecking Ball. We were at mile 165, when the driver side ball joint broke and I saw the tire flop over onto the rock!
It was 8:30pm… I radioed to the team, now the other side broke… there was silence – everyone knew that meant our day was over. At that point I requested all the guys from pit 2A come help us get it fixed so we could just get off the trail. After fighting the steering all day, it felt like I had 2 broken wrists!!! I did not have the energy to stand in the cold canyon with the wind howling to fix another knuckle again… I sat in the car and tried to stay warm. I even fell a sleep at one point. It took them until 11:22pm before I started the car and turned around and headed back to camp. Bryan and I were super cold and hungry!!!
I know it was a long day for everyone - THANKS to my team and sponsors for their support!