Day 4, race day.  It started with rain and an overcast sky but quickly turned into a perfect day and got warm enough that a lot of racers experienced cooling issues.

Staging began around 7:30 and the first rig left the starting gate at 8:00 am. Jack and Scott had drawn starting position #25 in the grid

Taking off after the flag drop.

Around the first turn and out of sight.  Here we made the mistake of switching pit rigs at the last second due to the weather.  We unloaded two of the buggies and put all the gear in Brian's truck so my rig was the only buggy. By the time we reached the first sand hill I knew we were running to slow to reach the checkpoint so I had Chad hop in with me and we made a beeline for the first pit and would come back and find Brian and the rest of the gear later.  Note for next year - pit rigs need to leave camp a half hour before the race starts.  

When Chad and I arrived we discovered #284 hadn't been in yet and we watched the second to last place starter drive by.  AS it turned out the guys got a flat tire roughly 15 miles into the race and as they plugged it had every vehicle pass them putting them in last place.  Once the tire was plugged they made up some ground and started passing people again and moved up a few positions before hitting pit #1.  Chad and I gassed them up and Jack said he didn't want to change the tire.  In hindsight we should have changed the tire but I understand they wanted to get back into the hunt and make up some ground before the rock crawling sections so we let them go and.  I left Chad at the pit and went back to look for Brian, found him and then led him out to Pit #1 which would also be pit #3 later in  the race. 

Somewhere along the way I lost a gas can off the back of my rig which meant I needed to go back to camp before the guys rolled thru pit #3.  We piled Chad, Wes and all the gear into my rig and set out for pit #2.

Upon arriving at Pit #2 we setup pit, I then headed back to camp for gas while Chad and Wes waited.  From this pit you could see the start of 4 of the rock courses and the sand hill leading into the first one.  It was here that we wished we had working race radios because we saw roughly 10 front runners come out of the mountains into pit #2, and lots of rigs heading up the sand hill to the first rock trail in this section but we couldn't tell where our car was and no one was coming out.

Wes managed to get the checkpoint guys to radio one of the other checkpoints and discovered our car was indeed in this section.  What we did not know at the time was a large traffic jam on Jackhammer had halted everyone behind a few broken rigs.  After about a half hour of waiting we packed up the rig with the intention of heading to the base of Jack North and hiking in to look for the guys.  Just as we had everything packed I saw them emerge from Jack North thru my binoculars.

The guys rolled into the pit and we assessed the damage.  The plugged tire had lost it plugs again so that was changed.  Jack also said the steering wasn't working and we confirmed the ram had taken a good hit, bending both the tie rod and ram shaft.  While Wes and Jack change the tire, Chad and I fueled the rig and Scott jumped in my rig to try and winch the tie rod back out.  Once all that was done the guys drained their bladders and got back in the rig, this time with Scott at the wheel.

 I think at this point we all honestly thought our goal of a top ten finish was out of the realm of possibility due to the tire issues and getting caught in the traffic jam.  We were slightly bummed but still wanted to finish.

We headed back to pit 3 where Brian and Karyn had burgers cooking on the grill.  Karyn had been counting cars that made it by on their way to the finish line and so far only 7 had made it past.  That meant there was a lot of carnage going on between pit #2 and #3 and in fact a lot of front runners were out of the race at this point. We even witnessed a few cars run out of fuel within sight of pit #3.

To our relief car #284 emerged at the top of the sand hill and descended down to pit #3.  When the guys arrived they said everything was good except for the steering, they both had to pull on the wheel to go right.  We gassed them and off they went physically in 9th place.

We packed up and headed back to the start line, arriving in time to see the #6, #7 and #8 finishers arrive with no change in position since passing pit #3.  Minutes passed and no sign of the guys, we knew they had to be the next ones in if they were still moving but couldn't remember how far behind finisher #8 they were.  Finally we hear the familiar sounds of a 5.0 in the distance.

The guys rolled across the finish line in Jack's 4 year old garage built trail rig in 9th place with a time of 4 hours and 55 minutes!    

Jack telling the Maxxis tire guy why we had a BFG Krawler on the rig.  The dude was eager to get Maxxis stickers on everyone's rigs at the start but made no offers to get jack a new tire with a  racers discount. 

After the race, Barry, Bill and myself headed out to run a few trails since the weather was so nice.  Towards the end of the day the wind did start picking up, here you can see a wall of sand sweeping across the lakebed in the distance.

I know a lot of people were worried about the weather for race day but I don't think you could have ordered it any better.  The light rain in the morning kept the dust down and the middle part of the day was sunny and warm.