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Phoenix Racing Team News | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| June 28,
2002 Best in the Desert Nevada 1000 A report by Team owner Bob Gray Well, the Nevada 1000 didn't turn out as well as we had planned, but we did run well for a while. We arrived in Las Vegas on Tuesday and stayed at the beautiful Orleans Hotel & Casino; the people there are wonderful and made sure we had a secure place to park the race truck.  Wednesday we
took the truck through Contingency and Technical inspection, passed both with
flying colors and got many comments on how great the vehicle looked. Later that
day we attended the drivers’ meeting and then went to bed early in
preparation for a very long day Thursday. Thursday
morning we were up at 4:00 am and off to the start line (80 miles out of Las
Vegas) at 5:00. The trip out was uneventful and after off-loading the race
truck we took our place in staging, 6th place off the start with Herbst in
front of us and Baldwin behind. We had our Globalstar Satellite phone wired
into our helmets for use as our primary communications, and during staging I
made a call that was as clear as any landline phone. This is a great set-up and
I think more competitors will be looking closely at it as a primary
communications source. Some of the benefits we realize are no “dead
spots,” secure communications (no one listening in), clarity and the
advantage of being able to contact anyone with a telephone, not just someone
with a radio on your frequency. Once we received the green
flag it was 8 miles of wide-open running down a fast dirt road—boy do
those Goodyear MTAs work good. We were running upwards of 140 mph and they
gripped like we were on rails. After leaving the fast road we got into miles of
rocks, rocks and more rocks. Again, the Goodyears really shined, allowing us to
start making up time on Herbst and pull away slightly from Baldwin.
Mile after mile our ELTA Industries sponsored Trick
Truck ran like a watch and we were fully enjoying ourselves when all of a
sudden it felt like we had a flat. Roger stopped the truck and I got out to
check—no flat—and no matter how hard he tried, Roger couldn't make
the truck move. We jacked up the rear end and after doing some checking we
realized the transmission had failed. Real bad news as our back-up transmission
had not been ready for this race and we had counted on being able to run the
whole race on just the one in the truck. It was very disappointing to have to
call the crew and tell them to come and tow us out—the whole team was
looking forward to three days of intense racing. Even though we didn't finish the race, we are pleased how the truck
performed and definitely will not go to another race without the spare
transmission available in our chase vehicle. We are
looking forward to the Tonopah 300 in August, and the pre-run in July.
We wish to thank all our sponsors who support our team:
Steve Kelley at American Racing Wheels, John Bekakis of Beko Radiator, Borla
Exhaust Systems, Danny Darcy at Drive Line Service of San Jose, John Dark of
Globalstar Satellite Phones, Jim Alexander and Little Joe of Goodyear Tire,
Fred Snow of HELLA Lights, all the wonderful people at the Orleans Hotel &
Casino (especially Michael and Brendan Gaughan), Redline Racing Oil, Art,
Lauren and Kerry of Sunoco Race Fuels, Wes Harris of Wesco Performance and a
very special “Thank You” to Tom Scahill for a dynamite race engine
and all the work he has done on our race truck. We learned a few secrets to
make the truck even faster and are very hungry for a top finish so look for us
to do well at the next race. Return to list of news releases. |
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Contact: Penny Nicolai, Concepts Unlimited,
818-881-6458, pennynicolai@aol.com |
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