Jesse Haines' Stampede Ultra4 Race Report

Well it's taken me a few days to recover from this year's Torchmate Ultra 4 Stampede. The Stampede is probably the biggest rock sports event of the year, next to the King of the Hammers race. It's a race I take very seriously, and our team invested an incredible amount of effort into preparing for this race. A month before the race my co-driver Gabe Strouse and myself spent a weekend pre-running some of the trails that would be used for the race. After that the car was stripped down and thoroughly prepped. The motor and trans were both in rough shape so they were rebuilt along with quite a few other things. As usual, things took longer than we had planned. We stayed up all night the night before the pre-run just to get the car ready in time to get it out on the race course. We put 50 miles on the car, and only found a few minor issues. With a little work the car was ready for Friday morning's qualifying.

On Friday morning, 41 of the 46 cars signed up attempted to run the qualifying course. Unfortunately for me the qualifying course had no rock crawling at all, and that is the place I usually make up time on the other teams. The course was mostly desert with a rough, rocky was in the middle of the course. I guess I didn't push my car hard enough through the rocky section because we only qualified 16th. It was a fairly disappointing result since we've qualified very well at the other races we've been to.

Saturday morning we lined up for the race behind 15 very respectable racers. The race would start out with close to 30 miles of desert through the hills of Northern Nevada. In the past, once the race starts it's only a matter of time before you start passing other teams with mechanical issues. We started the race and ran for nearly 25 miles before we saw another racer broken down. The level of competition has definitely stepped up!

We started the race with a conservative game plan. Some predicted this race would be harder than any of the King of the Hammers races. I did my best to keep the car centered on the curvy desert roads that were scattered with rocks just waiting to give you a flat tire. Even though it felt like we were really taking it easy out there, no one was catching us yet. When we finally got to the first rock trail we came up on some traffic. We spotted a few good lines during the pre-run and used them to pass a few cars. We were slowly making our way through the field of cars that started ahead of us. As we drove through Shotgun we had another car in our sights. We followed him out of the trail and through the windy hills. At some point I hit the brakes and the pedal went to the floor. I couldn't get the brakes to slow us down at all, including the front/rear cutting brake. With a lot of hill in the next 10 miles before the remote pit we decided running the car in low range and compression braking would be the only way to stop the car. It got us back to the pits, but it slowed us down quite a bit having to keep the car under 30 mph.

Once we got the car back to the pits our crew did an awesome job finding the problem and getting it fixed up. A fitting had simply come loose and caused a pretty severe leak. Once we were back on course we headed to Giant's Throne Canyon, the toughest section of the race course. We were making good progress and early in the canyon we came up on a pretty serious traffic jam. It looked like 4 cars were lined up to attempt a tough waterfall. We made a risky pass high above the teams at the base of the trail, and it paid off as we didn't even see those cars in the rear view mirror. We had trouble later in the trail as we passed another rolled over racer. I wanted to pull the front winch down as we attempted the climb, but we found out the winch rope had broken somehow. Eventually we were able to get by and continue up the trail. The rest of lap 1 was uneventful, and I believe we came into the main pits in 4th place. We fueled the car, fixed the winch rope, and took off.

On lap 2 we left the pits right behind the 3rd place car of Randy Slawson. I didn't even attempt to keep up with them through the upcoming desert section. I knew he would be fast and I didn't want to ride in his dust and possibly wreck the car. Surprisingly we didn't see any lapped traffic for quite a while. We made it back to the remote pit with no issues, but we made a quick stop to get a drink of water. Randy Slwason was stopped in the pits, but took off just seconds after we did. He would follow us into Giant's Throne Canyon. Since Slawson qualified well ahead of us I knew we had close to 5 minutes on him after corrected time. They caught us near the beginning of the canyon and I let them pass. The plan was to follow him through the canyon and stay close enough to beat them on corrected time. Slwason got stuck behind another car at the tough waterfall climb, and we once again took the bypass. We ended up right in front of them, and a few minutes up the trail I let them pass again. We came up on what looked like a parking lot in the middle of the canyon. The only passable line was to winch up past the broken cars. As Randy Slawson winched in front of us we patiently waiting right behind him. It took them a few minutes, but they eventually winched up the climb. Once it was our turn we realized the winch rope was again broken. It took a minute to get it tied before we made our first attempt at winching. The rope came untied costing us valuable time. Eventually we got up the climb, but we dropped back quite a way behind Slawson.

The last section of course to the finish was uneventful. We did what we could to make up time, but when we got to the finish line we found out that Randy had finished far enough ahead that he was 4 minutes ahead of us on corrected time. Later, Rick Mooneyham came across the finish line and also just beat us out on corrected time. We would have to settle for 5th place. It was a respectable finishing, but still disappointing knowing how close we were to a 3rd place finish.

Races like this are really a team effort, and I need to thank those that helped us do as well as we did. My co-driver, Gabe Strouse, Lil' Rich Klein for running the pits, Josh England for helping to finish up the car, Buddy for being a fan and helping any way he can, the crew from Torchmate Racing, our families, and anyone else who helped make this happen. There are too many to list.

In a week and a half I'll be in Tooele, UT for the We-Rock Grand Nationals. The GNC will be the final rockcrawling event of the year for me so I'm hoping to finish on a high note.

Jesse