This weekend was the SCORE Off Road Race in Laughlin Nevada. Laughlin is a small casino community about an hour from here. My job started Friday, when the Trophy Trucks were doing their qualifying. We timed each truck as it did the 6 1/2 mile course. The trucks were competing for their starting order on Saturday's race.
Some of the Trophy Truck drivers are well known in the racing profession; Robby Gordon began in off road then branched out to Indy Car and then NASCAR. Oh, and he competes in the Paris-Dakkar rally every year. Then Brendan Gaughan races NASCAR. Jesse James, from Monster Garage races Trophy Truck as well.
My son gets autographs every time I work at one of these races, but I've never gotten him Robby Gordon's. Believe me, Shay complains about that! So on Friday I managed to corner Robby and get his autograph. The rest of the time I could concentrate on my job and get a few good photos.
Like this one. Robby had come into the motorhome where we do the scoring, asking about his time. He then touched my nuts. These nuts:
Here's Mike and I scoring. My posture is typical of what I keep all weekend, 14 hours per day. I've finally gotten smart and I take loads of ibuprofen and apply plenty of muscle rub:
Saturday morning we got our coffee at 5:30am and headed up the street to the dirt track. We were ready way in advance, because we had our paperwork in order and the race vehicles didn't leave the line until 7:00am.
The first racers were lined up at 6:30, and the fog was kind of neat looking:
Fans started packing into the grandstands, and the races went really quickly. Each different class had its own race, which was six laps. They usually took eight minutes to do a lap. We had to log each race vehicle's lap time, and that got dicey at times.
Lots of dirt flying, as a couple of trucks leave the start line:
I had great opportunities to get shots of the trucks as they jumped nearby:
This guy is a local who offers his services during the race, towing disabled race vehicles off the track:
This is Robby Gordon lining up for his race:
Sunday morning's races were round two for each of the classes. As the sun came up, I got this shot:
Jesse James broke his truck on Saturday, but had it repaired and ready to go on Sunday:
There was a little bit of visible evidence of his troubles from the day before:
At lunchtime, I was going to have the usual burger, but then my attention was drawn to a Greek food stand that had an ENORMOUS Greek salad on display out front:
Of course I had a Gyro, with beef and lamb:
I had the best seat in the house for race watching. The cars and trucks put on a great show, too!
I caught SCORE CEO Sal Fish in a somewhat introspective moment:
Or maybe he was looking at his new shoes.
Long hours, lots of numbers, and a little bit of stress; but I love working the races.
