Overland Camping Roadtrip Blog
Travel Day 37:
Total km driven to date: 7269km
Total km walked to date: 289.58km
Glen Helen Raceway, CA
0km drive
10.6km on foot
Today was up early and went to get my media vest and credentials for the pre-running and qualifying that was taking place later today. Got signed in and met up with Phil Kaos so we could plan a strategy for covering as much of the event as we could. Pre-Running started for the 4400 class (the big dogs) at 11:30 so I got on track and got a bunch of photos as they warmed up and learned the track. Gotta love being media and getting to go anywhere on course as long as you’re safe, there really is nothing like standing 5′ away from an 800hp race car flying by at 90mph and trying to take pictures at the same time! Following the 4400 class all of the UTV Side-by-sides got to go out on the course and then the Limited classes got a chance to go (4500, 4600, 4800). I wont bore you with specs of the different classes but just know that the 4400 cars are Unlimited, race whatever the hell you can dream up as long as it passes the safety/tech inspection. The other classes have certain restrictions either in tire size, shock size, engine size and whether it needs to be based off an actual stock truck frame vs a full tube frame race rig. Pre-Running was over at 3:30 and they did some track maintenance and then the 4400 class were doing qualifying for the placing in the main event tomorrow between 4:30 and 6:30. In those 2 hours you can run as many laps as you want trying to place the fastest time for tomorrow’s starting order. There was some awesome action with rollovers from multiple competitors, broken steering to a broken crank requiring a full motor replacement tonight before the main tomorrow afternoon….all in a days racing! Got some great shots of the action, Glen Helen is really a very awesome track, there is some short-course stuff (roller jumps and banked turns) some flatland stuff as they wizz right beside everyones camp and the middle of the entire facility and then up onto the motocross track with some huge climbs and tight banked turns on the hillside before flying down the back straight at over 90mph back into the short course track…..very cool layout. No real rocks to speak of but fast dirt, technical turns and big jumps….oh and they’re doing all this while side by side with up to 30 other cars. It gets intense with big 40″ tires sticking out grabbing onto the other cars, bumping is part of racing and sometimes it leads to some epic rollovers! Now that the stage is set tomorrow is a full day of racing for money and glory tomorrow, after taking photos all day today I think tomorrow I will be doing some of the first filming I’ve done on my trip so far. Its going to be a long day but extremely exciting, I can’t wait!
Please visit my other website at www.pathmakerproductions.com for a full gallery of race photos!