Nick and I just finished the Nevada Open Road Race this weekend. We had the most amazing time. I think this type of event is one of those "life expierences" that should be had by all.
After a long trip out Hwy 50, we converged at Ely Nevada where we met Mad Dawg, Chuck, Bob, Larry, Dan, and Elliot. Much to my surprise the first night Mad Dawg went to bed early but the rest of us stayed out to take in the local scene.
The first day was spent going through technical inspection and getting the car prepped for the race. We had an issue with our shoulder belts as they were not the required 3" belts. Luckily Larry and Bob loaned me their passenger belts to outfit my car. I will have to get that sorted for next time. The rest of the day we fixed a couple of other issues, checked our fluid levels and went over some of the race strategy. Since Nick and I had never done this before our strategy was to "finish" the race and just use our handheld GPS for average speed and
use two stop watches one for total time and one for mile markers.
The day of the race we got up early after bout 4 hours of sleep. We caravaned out to the site with the pantera group. Our grid position was mid pack so we had some time to watch the first groups start the race. One Viper laid enough rubber to cover 100 yards. We were a little late getting back to our car but we got belted up and went up to tire inspection where they believed they saw a nail but turned out to be a rock. After that we were off.
The first five minutes I was just settling in and getting the feel for the car at that speed on this highway. The car was running well and we were doing about 4700 rpm for 120 mph. Our goal was to put about 30 seconds of time "in the bank" so when we get to the narrows we had some time to burn. I bumped the rpm up to 5000 which is bout 130 miles per hour. Pretty soon we had plenty of time in the bank and had to pass the red corvette in front of us before the narrows. We also had to wave to the only Pantera on the road, Mad Dawg where he had a mechanical issue. After the narrows the corvette who had to be way off his time, came by us about 140. We started backing down as we had 2 minutes in the bank and needed to scrub the time off. Nick held up the stopwatch as we crossed the line. I believe we were off by 1.5 seconds to early but have yet to see the actual results.
After the race we waited for the road to clear and made our way back to Dennis to help out where we could. On the way back to Ely we lost our clutch to a fluid leak. Also the airdam finally broke lose as it was damaged in the race. We made it on the trailer with Larry's help. After the event we were notified by Elliot ( who went to the awards ) that we placed first in our
120 Mph class! Beginners Luck! We all plan to go back again, it was the most fun I have had with the Pantera yet!
Update, the results are in and we indeed get 1st place in our class! We averaged 120.0090 speed and variance from target time was 0.2030 seconds.
Nevada Open Road Race 06 Results
Nevada Open Road Race 06 Video
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