05/15/2019
2019 Polaris RZR Pro Rock/UTV Race #3 WildCat Offroad had a great 6.5 mile race course mapped through a small portion of this amazing 2000+ acre offroad park in the mountains of southeastern Kentucky.
Changes to the team for this race included a brand new co-driver, Bryson Oates, and a plan to Pre-run the race course!! We arrived to the park late Thursday night to allow all day Friday for prerunning and qualifying. Something rare in recent years due to time. Got up fresh on Friday and set off to prerun the course. Everything went smoothly, took our time and took notes as course was gonna be fast with very little room for passing. The course was primarily tight single-track woods with just a few open straight spots that would allow for some quick passes. It then continued and exited the woods to a long sweeping off camber turn down into a mud ravine with steep slick hill exit to the main open area with the start/finish, but not before taking flight with a nice 15’ gap jump to the start/finish line!!
Later in the day qualifying began on a very short half mile qualifying short course, which consisted of a several hill climbs, descents and off-camber sections then finishing with the gap jump! The jump was large enough in size to deter some of the racers but our decision was to attempt the jump and hope for the best as qualifying up front would minimize traffic on the raceday. Beginning the qualifying lap down the first drop off we heard a loud bang but kept pushing the car harder through the rest of the short course then sailing it over the jump successfully and ended up qualifying 2nd, only getting beat by .017 of a second! We headed back to the paddock to check the car. The noise sounded like a broken front right axleshaft. We flexed out the car in attempt to get it to click, or seize or make the noise again, but couldn’t hear anything and the car was pulling fine. Then jacked the front end up and rotated the front driveline. No noise, no binding.
We called it a night after a great steak dinner at a local restaurant hoping that what ever the bang had been was just a fluke!
Saturday morning drivers meeting was slightly delayed in order to insure all scoring equipment was fully operational due to the rain overnight. The race was set for 3 laps. We lined up behind the quick qualifier, 6cyl Jeep Wrangler of Jason Dehn. We headed off the line to chase him down but as we got further into the lap, the phantom “noice” started coming back 😞. We caught up to Jason and he allowed us a clean pass in the first opportunity. The bangs were getting louder and more frequent so we backed off our pace to save the car. Coming into the last half mile of the first lap we heard a horn and let the fire red 6cyl Jeep Cherokee Roger King and Jarrod Johnson pass us. As we rounded the off-camber towards the finish we saw the red Cherokee fail to make it up the hill out of the muddy ravine. He was reversing down the ravine and we were headed down the ravine from the other side. He continued backing up directly into the line we were headed into and we collided. 😞. We backed up off his rear quarter and made an attempt to drive around and up the hill he had just gotten denied on, but had no success either. Backed up as far as we could without hitting his Cherokee again and tried again. He was stuck and so were we and finally realizing the entire rear axle was no longer pulling. 😞 The rest of the competitors came down the same hill slid into the ravine and ALL got stuck. Every racer now stuck at the bottom and trying to find a way up. The white 6cyl Cherokee of Kevin Cox and Jesse Spencer came out of nowhere and crossed in front of us at the bottom of the ravine only to get stuck now in front of us in the pit of mud. Next came Matt Gresser in his 4cyl Wrangler only to slide into the side of us. Only way out was up and required winching to the limited trees. As the race was now at a standstill and within view of the start/finish the race operations bypassed the race course to avoid the pileup and sent recovery assistance to extract the field of competitors from this quagmire. We now had a working winch, but only front wheel drive, we winched up and out but now the last competitor to get up this hill. My co-driver got back in the car and we bypassed the gap jump and headed to the start/finish line but front wheel drive could not pull us up the final accent. We reversed the car and drove up backwards and crossed the line for lap one and started into lap 2 but quickly realized there was no way we were gonna make it through with just front wheel drive. Couldn’t make it up the next hillclimb and had to get extracted off the course just as my front driveshaft snapped in two! Our race now ended and got towed into the pits for the rest of the race.
Had all the right intentions for race success but the car had other plans. Huge thanks to Bryson Oates for jumping in to fill co-driving duty’s. Great job on the winching skills!!!
Congrats again to Matt Gresser again on his 2nd first place finish, Roger King / Jared Johnson and Jason Dehn on their podium finishes. Hats off to all the competitors that came out and put on a great show.
Thanks to the great Pro Rock Racing staff for another amazing race course!!
Again can’t wait for the next Polaris RZR Pro Rock Racing event August 17th at Windrock, Tennessee
Thanks to all my Sponsors that make it possible.
BFGoodrich Tires
Trail-Gear
FOX shocks
GotPropane.com
ToyTec Lifts
Raceline Wheels
PCI Race Radios
Marlin Crawler
Branik Motorsports
WabFab Off-Road LLC
RuffStuff Specialties
