(Words and photos by Doug Gregory) – Due to the events we mentioned in our previous entry from this race, we didn’t see the rock buggy racing we planned on but the day certainly was not a total wash. We did get to see Bill Baird take his Ultra4 buggy (the beast) out on DTOR’s motocross track and turn a few laps. With its 8-into-1 headers that thing has a very unique sound.
Derek West, one of the most-successful competitors at King Of the Hammers, was also there and went for a few laps himself before the added power caused by a new, smaller blower pulley found the soft spot in the rear spool.
We hadn’t wheeled at DTOR in quite a while and I wanted to go see the race site and hopefully find a few rigs that stayed and were out playing around. We ended up in a few hairy lines (no named trails) and recent rains had made what should have been super-easy a bit of a challenge. Had I bothered to air down the tires or disconnect the front sway bar we’d done better. As it was we led a Jeep around that didn’t know the park well and were quite pleased with our Blazer. We had one guy in a Side-by-side look at us funny when we went into a deep water hole and had little trouble climbing out.
If you haven’t been to a rock bouncier race, Ultra4, or a rock crawling event I suggest you do so. There are all types of power plants, lots of ingenuity, and some serious skill involved. These really aren’t just a bunch of tubes stuck together. These are serious machines worth watching. Be safe and enjoy.
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