The Colorado 250 – ProjectBaja.com

It’s tough being an offroad team in Colorado. Almost any race you want to go to requires at least 8 hours of towing, weeks of preparation and a pile of cash. We are fortunate to have some smaller local races that help us get some seat time without having to spend all of our resources. Colorado Offroad Extreme is our local park and they have a small series of races that we pick and choose depending on our schedule. (http://www.coloradooffroadextreme.com/)

This year C.O.R.E. offered the Colorado 250. 250 miles of racing is a lot in Colorado and though the course isn’t as rough or technical as races in Nevada, Utah or California, seat time is seat time and wheel to wheel racing is good fun. Even better, we left the house at 7 and dropped the car off at 3:30 with 200 miles of racing and one trophy!

The day began smoothly, we headed out and arrived at CORE early so we could get the car warmed up, teched and prepare for the race. Everything went smooth with Tech and registration and the drivers meeting began on time. We were signed up for the 1600 class, which is lighter cars, more suspension but similar engine size to ours. You have to expect things like this when you run a fairly obscure class when you are racing outside of Mexico.

We lined up and went off the line. Matt W and I (Josh) ran the car through the first laps tracing the route with our GPS, once we got a full loop traced we were able to start using the GPS to call the course notes. Our intercom stopped working halfway through the first lap and a momentary stop showed that someone didn’t connect the power supply well enough… That someone was me… most definitely.

We started getting comfortable on course with minimal lap traffic and minimal traffic in general. We were able to maintain a great pace on course. Our car ran strong from the beginning and we were turning fairly consistent laps. We started seeing some cars break down, but we kept churning. The race was run on Time, so we made a judgement call after we started seeing our fuel economy. We needed only about 3 gallons of fuel to be able to finish. Gina Wilson was our sole crew member and we radioed in for fuel. She prepared to lug our 42 pound fuel jug and we pulled in. As she started to wrestle with the can a neighboring team sprinted over to help. We got fuel in the car and were on our way in what seemed like a split second.

We kept running strong to the end choosing different lines to attempt faster paces. When the checkered flag waved we finished our race and pulled in.

It turns out we finished 2nd in class! A completely unexpected result since we were running heavy in a quicker class!

We had a great time out there and look forward to running more races out at core next season.