The HDRA Fireworks 500 in Reno, NV July 1-8 2012
F.A.S.T. Fabrication (me and my dad) work 12 days straight prior to leaving for the race to complete prep as well as repair damage from previous race and add upgrades to the truck. The truck was loaded on the trailer Monday July 2 and ready to leave.
We left Bullhead City, AZ just before 9pm on Monday. The F.A.S.T. Racing 1980’s motor home towing 7,000 lbs made it to Reno at 9am on Tuesday July 3rd. We had to stop and fill up at every little town but it was a fun and very costly (gas) journey. We stayed at the Grand Sierra Resort RV Park in a nice 60 ft pull through for just over $20 a day. It was going to be a mini vacation but from the time we got there until Sunday we were going non-stop. I do have to admit it was fun staying there and we had a nice little camp site set up with lots of chairs, two ez-ups, and an awning with access to river and resort pool. Greg Parker and Sam Berri were just a few spaces away from us.
On Wednesday the 4th and Thursday the 5th we went out to the Tahoe Reno Motorplex (Fireworks 500 track) and did some testing.
I let my cousin whose first time being in the vehicle get a little bit of driving and lots of shifting and co-pilot experience. We had planned on running the entire course and putting info in the GPS, but once we saw the course that plan had change. The course was mostly one lane and was very rocky and I had only 3 spares to last the race. We tested mostly on the qualifying track and my brother and friend took my cousins new dodge out from the end of pit road to pit B. We were out testing when they did this; they were the only ones that really got a good look at the course. We went home Wednesday and watch fireworks from our camp.
The next morning got a few hours of testing with my original co-pilot who got into town the night before. We noticed a bad power steering leak and opted out of running the qualifying, to keep truck fresh and ready and did not think it would matter on this course with so few entries. If I knew your results would be based on where you qualified I would have done this differently. I have lots of sequence photos from a DSLR as well as Go Pro footage from testing. Here are a couple pictures most from Thursday.
As I said we got lots of sequence shots ranging from 4-10 shots in a row. I am no photo editor or even video maker but I give it my best. I basically just crop and merge photos using scenery marks to line up the shots. I am sure this is not the correct way to do a stitching but I am like first grade level when it comes to photo and video editing. Just know the basics on Photoshop, Corel, and Sony Vegas. I plan to try and fit 1-2 classes in this subject into my schedule starting this fall at a community college.
Thursday night we got home and washed the truck to prepare it for tech on Friday.
The Lucas Oil/Deakenbuilt team and I had plans to cone off an area at 6 am and get our trucks over there by 7am; they had dropped their trailer off at my camp the night before. Well everything worked for about 30 minutes then we were told Cameron wanted the spot under the Reno sign, but think it was HDRA because they put the top 3 qualifiers right there.
It was cool though being next to them, even though seemed like the nice area to be at was under the bridge in the shade or by the stage. All in all it was a great day on Friday. There were lots of spectators walking by and checking out the trucks on display. News reporters and film crews, great bands and food, and tech came to us. Little disappointed we could not participate in the pit challenge but it was pretty cool driving our trucks through downtown Reno with a police escort. However getting your truck back on a trailer and to a new parking location and back to the Eldorado all within an hour and a half for the drivers meeting was a huge challenge. I owe a big thanks to my team member Chris Richards for doing us a solid and sitting alone by himself in the pavilion parking lot to guard the truck and trailer so we could disconnect and zoom over to the Eldorado casino. He sat for over an hour and I guess the shuttle bus we were originally going to wait for never came back, thanks a lot Chris.
Co-pilot to the left of me, my cousin who was a new co-pilot and alternate driver to the right of me. Chris Richards to the far left.
We got back to camp just before 8 pm, was hoping to be in bed by 9 pm originally and then we hope for 10 pm. Well that did not happen lol; we had to install the IRC tracking system, pull and move a radio to a chase vehicle, and fix/check a couple other things on truck. Then it was download all the files off all the SD cards to wipe them clean and get all the batteries on chargers. In the end went to bed at 12pm and got up at 5:30am. Got to get enough people that can do everything so I can just show-up and race after a good night’s rest lol. I enjoy being a part of it all, and will always be hands on. I think it is probably the same for most racers in our class. Here are some shots from race day, I have a handful more. For Go Pro footage I used up an entire 32 GB card on the in car camera, the front camera has a little over an hour of racing and the rear camera got like 2 hours of racing. The in car was hard wired but the other two had battery back packs yet one of the cameras only had one battery in it. Video footage won’t be ready until a few weeks from now.
