The Mint 400 was 4 laps of about 100 miles through the Valley of Fire, north of Las Vegas. The race started at 7am, with the trophy trucks starting first, 30 seconds apart. We were 7th in line for the start. After pretty long days on Thursday and Friday for the pre-run, fan-fest, contingency and tech inspection, we were a bit rushed on race morning, but managed to get everything together and get in line with a few minutes to spare.

Things got interesting immediately as about 2 miles out of the start was what seemed like a few miles of silt. The dust cloud sitting over this area made it pretty exciting, but we made it through without incident. Our first lap continued on quite well (I think it ended up our fastest lap), but with two exciting moments. First, about on hour in, we hit a rise awkwardly, kicking the back end up to just this side of going end over end. After staring straight down at the ground for a second the back returned to the ground, and then we came fairly close to rolling. With some luck we managed to get things straight and continue on.

Our second bit of excitement came only a few minutes later when we hit a large sandy whoop, augering in pretty hard and causing our hood to basically explode off the truck. As luck would have it, there were a bunch of photographers around and they got some great photos of the action. The rest of the lap was fairly uneventful, relatively. At various times we appeared to be in 5th place.

The pit stops and second and third laps all went smoothly. Our pace was about the same, if slightly slower that the first lap, and we still hovered in the 5th to 7th place range. As the race went on and the course got rougher and rougher, both Tony and I were remarking on how incredibly the truck performed and how happy we were not have any flats! The one item of note is how bad I was at making hairpin turns at 20mph through the pits! Each time I pretty much trashed the berms and nearly ran over all the equipment in the neighboring bit areas. I’m sure no one was happy about it, but was pretty entertained watching the idiot in the trophy truck!

The fourth and final lap, as with the the others, ran straight into the silt bed. This time the visibility was so bad, we eventually decided we should try to edge out to the right and see if we could peek out of the cloud. I did, and no sooner did the could clear up then we saw a giant ditch in front of us. We flew into it, hitting the other side violently, launching the truck up out of the ditch and about 20 feet into another ditch, where we came to rest. Our final resting place was nearly three feet deep and almost perfect trophy truck size. After a few stunned moments, we determined we were OK, but we weren’t getting the truck out easily.

A couple guys who were walking nearby, having worked on getting another truck unstuck, stopped to help. They were super nice and helpful, digging for about 30 minutes and changing our exploded front wheel. Still we couldn’t get out under our own power. TJ, Ira and Jeff drove to the close point on the highway and hiked in about a mile and a half carrying food, water, a jack and other stuff to try to help out. Was great to see them, but we still weren’t getting out without a tow. Eventually, Jamie came by in the rescue truck and pulled us out. According to her she’d never in all her years of racing seen a truck in such a spot.

By the time we got undone we had lost about 2 hours. We were a bit banged up, and there was a small crack in the frame and a possible bend. Probably we and the truck could have made it around our last 97 miles or so, but this was not a Best in the Desert points race and I decided we should call it a good day while we were still in a spot where we could get off the course easily.

Despite not finishing and having a few questions about the truck (with a short prep window before the Terrible’s 250!) we all had a great time, and I definitely learned a lot. We were running really well and within striking distance of a top 5 finish, so we’re pretty happy with that. Hopefully we’ll take what we learned and do even better in our next race, including finishing!