Staggs Runs Hard In Pahrump But Has To End His Day Early

Staggs runs hard but a $2 part ends his day early at Pahrump 250.

Coming into Pahrump we had one thing in mind and that was to end the year with the last race finish on the box. We finished prepping the YXZ just before Thanksgiving. This gave the team a chance to relax and enjoy the time with family. The following Thursday afternoon we would make our way to Pahrump, all the hotels in town had sold out months before the race. We opted to stay in our RV right across from the hotel/tech and it worked out great. By the time we arrived and got settled it was already freezing, in all the kaos of unloading and getting set up, we some how managed to lock the keys in one of the rv’s. “Siri…… How may I help you?”  “Siri look for a local locksmith”…… I found 1 match in this area. “Siri call locksmith”…. you get the point. Things started out rough but we figured it out.

Friday morning would greet us with freezing cold temps. Luckily BITD had worked out a deal with the town and we were able to drive our race car to tech. This made registration and tech a breeze. We used the extra time to go back and get all the last minute things ready for the race on Saturday, after speaking with some friends who had the chance to pre run we knew it was going to be a rough race and freezing temperatures for the start.

Saturday morning we would get up and get ready and go to the staging for the police escort to the start. The chase crew would take off and head to pit 1. The police escort that BITD and the town had put together was awesome, we would get to drive 15 miles on the highway through town with the streets lined with fans. It was cold out and we were nice and warm with our PRP heated seats. Sitting in line at the start we would wait our turn. After a hand shake from Casey Folks from BITD we got the green light.

There was a slight breeze which was helping with the dust but I definitely wasn’t ready for the first 15 brutal rocky race miles. Rolling into pit one we started having radio and communication issues, we stopped in pit 1 for a brief stop and couldn’t get the issue resolved so we took off and shortly after would lose all communications. Navigating a desert race is hard when things are perfect, when you cant speak to your co-driver the challenge more than doubles. My co-driver Brandon would start using hand signals as our only result. Our chase crew had a mishap at pit 1 they jumped out to help a 6100 team with flats and some how locked the keys in the truck, they would have no choice but to break a window to get inside (Siri coulnt help us with this one), keys were not on our side this weekend.

Coming into pit 2 we would start getting a taste of the silt and visibility was reduced to 1 foot, to top it off we were still navigating with hand signals. We blew though pit two and would go into some more rough rocky terrain followed by long sections of deep silt, silt just as bad as I have seen in Baja but the sections seemed to never end as we approached pit 3 we would stop and take a splash of fuel and take off again into more dust and long nasty silt beds. We were charging hard and making good time by the time we made it to pit 4 our crew informed us we were now 3rd in class and 7th overall. BITD implemented a new rule in 2016, “the first ten cars to start were the top ten overall finishers in class from the last race.” I definitely don’t like it, we would have to push hard to make our way through the 900 turbo class before we would even start to reach the 3 front runners in our class. Leaving pit 4 we had had a good plan and so far the Pahrump 250 was going well for us and we had our sights on a podium finish. 3 miles out of pit 4 we would break a inner tire rod end link off in the rack. We now were trying to get a hold of the crew, no cell service we tried the radio with the hand held mic and we were able to get through to them and tell them what parts we needed. While we started to repair the steering, two teams would bring the parts from pit 4 to us and drop them off, in BITD racers or officials only can help racers on the track the pit crew can only help if we are in the pit so I owe a big thank you to both of those teams who brought us the parts or it would have cost us a lot more time.

We got the repairs done and got back into the Yamaha YXZ1000r and started to charge hard again and make up lost time. Thanks to our tracker the crew was able to see we were up and running again. The next 30 miles would be brutal deep silt and we would pass many broken cars as we came down the big 5000 to 3000 elevation drop in the course into more silt and into pit 5. With no issues we waved at the pit crew as we passed. Unfortunately at mile marker 175 in the deep silt we would lose a $2 part ending our run for the podium.

Pahrump was a rough one but we learned a lot this year in what it takes to get the new Yamaha YXZ1000R to the top in the roughest off road race series in the country. As always we will regroup and be ready for a fresh and strong start jan 6-7 at the first Best In The Desert race for 2017 in Parker, AZ. I also want to thank MSA wheels and EFX tires, we once again had no wheel failures or flats in the rough sharp rocky terrain in Pahrump while many others did. I cant thank my crew which consists of my friends and family with out them we wouldn’t be out there. The support I get from so many great partners gives us the drive to compete at this level.

I want to give a huge thank you to my friends and family. Without their support none of this would be possible.

A big thanks to all the sponsors that helped me get here.
Alba Racing . PRP Seats . Yamaha . Lonestar Racing .
Rugged Radios . MSA Wheels . EFX Tires .
STV Motorsports . Factory UTV .
Suspended Fabrication .
Rhino Wraps

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