Laughlin: Post-race quotes, part 2

Continued from part 1

Class 5/1600

554 Raul Solano (1st Place) On the second lap I hit a big groove and rolled.

551 Mike Simpson (2nd Place) Quotes from Gerardo Iribe, driver in Sunday's race Mike Simpson drove yesterday and gave me the car in second place. I believe the course was a lot better today than yesterday. There were a lot more lines; better and straighter. They did a really good job on the course. They watered it down really good. Everything they said they were going to do, they did it, and we love it. We had a flat at the end of the third (lap). We went on a flat the whole fourth lap.

Class 7

710 Jason Jernigan (1st place) Two very good days, I drove both days. Larry (Roeseler, 703) passed me on about the third lap, halfway through, and I let him go by because he still had a good chunk of time to make up. When we first started, it (the course) wasn't too bad. but it got chewed up real quick, nothing but huge, huge holes that swallowed up the truck. With eight minutes on Larry we knew that he would have to lap us. I was concerned, just trying not to have a flat tire or anything like that, no down time. We let him by us so that we didn't have to push the truck too hard, just try to keep him in our sights.

703 Larry Roeseler (2nd Place) After yesterday the course changed just dramatically. I figured maybe they'd groom it up a little bit for us, but I found out right away that there's a lot of big bumps still out there. The course is really, really fun. What's great about it is it's wide enough that you go inside or outside and pick your lines and there's bad spots and there's some better spots. It makes for great racing. Today, Jason (Jernigan) and I had a great battle. He beat me by eight minutes yesterday. We had a flat tire, a rim problem basically, so by the time we changed the wheel we lost that eight minutes. So he knew if I beat him today all he had to do was just follow me. He could lose a little bit of time, but he wasn't going to lose eight minutes.

Class 7s

720 Mike Horner, driver of record (1st place) Quotes from Doug Siewert, driver in Sunday's race We had a great day. We ended up putting a junkyard tranny on Thursday night and we came out here with no reverse and here we are with the win, so it was a great day. Mike Horner drove yesterday and I drove today. He told me the course was getting sandy and getting rougher. Our co-driver for both days said it was way, way worse today than it was yesterday. (No reflection of the driver right?) Absolutely, we were faster today than we were yesterday I think.

Class 7SX

740 John Holmes (1st Place) Quotes from Mark Landersman, driver in Sunday's race We broke a spring yesterday, so we put a spare spring in that's different and it doesn't handle right. We were running the whole race on one oxygen sensor because we had an exhaust problem so we had to plug one off. We've been a bit down on power, but it wasn't a power problem; it was mostly suspension. The Goodyear tires made a big difference. They hooked up pretty nicely. I just wish we'd have had our A suspension in the truck so I could caught him. I couldn't catch him. He (Tim Lawrence, No. 748) drove a great race, very fast. (Landersman said his brother, Marine Col. David Landersman, had been slated to ride with him, but he is in process of shipping out to Iraq. He got called back to duty Saturday night and left early Saturday morning.) I've got to congratulate Tim. He just drove so well. I just hoped he'd let up a little bit. I poured it on on the third lap and I know he didn't put any time on me there, but I think he put his A game on the fourth lap and pulled away from me a little bit. It's going to be very close. (The Holmes-Landersman entry won the overall by one second.)

748 Tim Lawrence (2nd Place) That was fun. The course was pretty junky yesterday, today it's beyond junk. It's about the worst six miles you could do, probably. We had absolutely no problems. The last lap I just didn't jump the big jump, but other than that we ran as hard as we could.

Class 8

800 Nick Vanderwey (1st Place) (Saturday) I was trying to slide in with my back end on the back and it just caught and started going over. I was catching it and catching it and it bicycled for a long time and I ended up pointed up the hill and tipped over on the side. It ran real good today.

Class 9

902 Forest Creasy (1st Place) Donny Ames drove on Sunday and said: We had a good run. On the third lap we started losing the clutch. It was a lot rougher (than on Saturday). It was a challenge. It made it fun. We almost lost it a few times, but we didn't, thank God.

Class 10

1021 John Cooley (4th place) We had a flat today, had to pull into the hotbed to change it. It was a good run, we were there. It was a good race, but it was rough out there. I don't see how these cars can make it around the racecourse, but they do. I was third yesterday. We thought we got first but we were suddenly told that we were the second car. Little bit of disappointment there. We had a flat on the fourth lap, and that's probably a couple minutes there in the hot pit. But I have to thank my crew out there. This is a tough race for me because this is the last race I am going to race in my car this year. I am going to take a year off, and I was really hoping for a win. I've been racing for about 23 years, so I just need to take a break every now and then.

1012 Adam Wik (DNF overall; 1st on Saturday) I had some little problems today. The shift linkage broke and got it stuck in another gear. That took us out. Part of the welded coupler broke. When that happened it was in neutral and we couldn't shift, so we had to stop and get out and jam it in fifth gear and get going and make it back to the pit. Once we did that they put it in second and we kept going. That took us out (of contention).

SCORE Lite

1206 Stan Potter (1st place) I drove today and my partner Dan Worley drove yesterday. It was good, it was real good. We lost third and fourth gear about halfway through, so that made it really tough to get through. But I saw Cameron (Steele, 1207) closing in on me so I just drove as smooth as I could because I didn't want to lose the rest of my gears so I just hung in there. I wanted to win and I knew that we were in the lead from yesterday so I just wanted to make sure we held that. Cameron is a great driver but I think our car was a little bit better today. It's a great venue for SCORE to come into. Just as long as Sal can figure out how to make the bumps smoothed out, it'll be okay. Those are huge bumps out there. The bumps were huge after practice, so it was really a test of the suspension out there and finding the good lines. I didn't drive yesterday so it took me almost the whole race to figure out where to go.

1202 Scott Wisdom (3rd Place) Quotes from Frank Wagner, driver in Sunday's race I just wish I could have done a little better. Scott got sick last night, so he gave me a call at 5 this morning and I got an arm band and borrowed a driver's suit and helmet and came out and had fun. It was great. I wish I could have at least pre-ran the course once, just to know where the turns were. It's a great car. It was a lot of fun.

1200 Tim Noe (4th Place) Quotes from Tom Watson , driver in Sunday's race I drove today in the 1200 car and yesterday in the 1249 car. Yesterday I had a flat tire on the second lap that cost me two or three minutes, so we finished 11th. Today we lost third gear on the fifth lap, so the last few laps we slowed up quite a bit and that put us out of the hunt for the lead. We started ninth today and I think we finished fourth. I like it better (coming from behind). It keeps you going and gives you some motivation.

1210 Chuck Sacks (8th Place) Quotes from Dale Ebberts, driver in Sunday's race It was good, a lot of fun. It was my first time racing a Class 12 car, so it was exciting and different. It's similar to a 1600 car and I've driven those a lot, but Class 12's got more suspension and a little bit more power. It's kind of fun to push a limited horsepower car around and try to make it go fast. We didn't do that well. After the first lap and a half the engine started missing, so we dropped back a little bit.

Class 11

1100 Eric Solorzano (Four-time champion was a DNF) We blew a transmission on the second lap (Saturday) and everything went away. We got lucky that we got into the pits and didn't have to tow the vehicle. We went to Bullhead (City) and bought a transmission from a wrecking yard and put it in. We just came out (Sunday) to have fun and practice a little bit.

Stock Full

861 Josh Hall (1st place) You know, these Stock Fulls they suck up those bumps, I'm telling you. Thank goodness for Fox Shocks because what worked on this truck was Fox Shocks and it really needed it today. I'm sure my dad (legendary racer Rod Hall) has never been prouder of his oldest son, never ever. Who knows, he's probably thinking how much money that's going to cost him that last race. We'll make it all happen for the next one though. It was a blast. No problems, not a single problem. We basically did nothing after the 1000, we babied this truck all the way to the finish line at the 1000. We've never raced here before under this format, we had heard that it was just brutal on cars. So we didn't want to do the big prep until after this race. We put a couple new steering parts on the truck and went out and ran as hard as we could without breaking it and here we are. (Did it live up to your expectations?) Yep, definitely. We'll be back

Stock Mini

779 Gavin Skilton (2nd place) Good job to all the American guys over there and that's a great effort by all involved. Its an excellent race, the Laughlin Desert Challenge was definitely that -- a challenge. The course changed throughout the weekend but all the racers on the course ran really clean, it made it really enjoyable to be here. Thanks a lot to all the guys who helped out on the Honda Ridgeline team and all the guys out on the course today and yesterday. The guys behind us got us there on the last lap, and we put it up on no wheels a couple times just to keep in front of them. We really made an effort today and pushed the Ridgeline as hard as we could. They got in front of us for about 10 seconds, then I got a little loose with it and kept in front. It was a great, fun challenge.

PROTRUCK

207 Alan Levinson (1st place) I drove both days; no problems. The rear shocks are gone but it was a little rough so you have to expect something. That's why we couldn't fly the jump, we were taking it kind of easy. Drive it easy off the jump and drive the course hard. I had a little cushion, not a whole lot. You don't want to slow down a lot because you can make mistakes; keep it hard but not over your head.

Sportsman Car

1401 Bryan Carr (1st Place) Oh it was a lot rougher than yesterday. Everything was way bigger, lot rougher, bigger holes. We just had some problems yesterday just to keep it alive to make it through. This is the first time I have ever raced. It was a blast, I'll be back again,

Sportsman Truck

1501 Mike Jenkins (1st Place) It was rough. The course got really, really nasty today, but it was a good time. We were not even sure we were going to make it here. We blew the motor on Friday (a week ago). We put the motor back together in three days and here we are, first place. We were working on it until midnight Wednesday night and loaded it up on the trailer Thursday morning and brought it up here. There was not one problem.

-credit: score