Master Pull USA 500 What a night !!!!

[Desert Addiction]

First things first, one of the most immpressive runs I have ever seen, Mad Myres #863 one of the first five to pass us on their third lap, WOW !!!!!! When 863 first came by us at mile 135 I was pretty sure the gas peddle was fused to the floor! My brother and I thought this could be really good or really bad and when they passed us on their third lap at 10:03pm I had to use a High Lift jack to get our jaws off the ground. Awesome job guys, a real inspiration!

One of my all time hero's 761 Rod Hall came by us on their first lap at 1:15pm and when he was the first one to pass us on their third lap at 9:29pm I was not as surprized as I was impressed, reaffirming the Hero status. Good job on your win Rod, I hope I can be a tenth as good as you.

Closely trailing Rod we first saw 7272 Sam Cothrun at 2:33pm and if you closed your eye's when Sam came by us at 9:40pm flat moving it sounded as if we were at a Moto GP race! Congratulations on your win Sam.

The Master Pull truck first passed us at 2:09pm and unfortunately must have had problems because Josh Hall came by us at 9:59pm missing a hood and at speeds exceeding Mach 4 there appeared to be flames coming off the truck. Great job guys.

Rescue Racing first came by us with Sam Cothrun seconds behind him at 2:33pm and when Rescue Racing passed us at 10:19pm we knew they must have had a pretty good day.

A short time behind Rescue Racing came 6043 a Trophylite on two missions, the finish line, but first a splash of fuel leaving just enough fuel to get them across the finish line and keeping our generator running long enough for the last car to pass us at 4:33am.

Congrats to the 1029 car, first in class Gaylord(skeeter) and Bill(of Fibercraft)

You could see the dedication and determination to finish in all the teams especially in 1107, 7163, 856, 81 and 813. Congrats on finishing.

Good job to everyone racing and to Vorra, Thanks Wes and Jenny for one heck of a day!

P.S. I just wated to say hi to the guys in the 8028 truck and hope to see you again but next time hopefully not so close.

[SPONSOR]

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[Curtis Guise]

Fish and I just got back tonight from Reno and it was well worth the trip. VORRA put on another great event! It was their first 500 mile race and I'm sure it will be bigger and better next year.

[43mod]

When we stopped to bum enough fuel to finish and you said all we have is unleaded you could not see how big my smile was ! Pemex is our prefered fuel but your unleaded did just fine. THANK YOU!
We had a great day/night small brake issue on lap 1 cost us about 40 min then clear sialing until last lap when a less than polite TT driver/codawg decided to play games.what I would have given for a nitrous bottle ? The track was kinda like racing the BAJA 500 instead of just brutal. It had silt, rough, fast, technical, rocks. switchbacks ,danger, and a long way around .I think Baja Designs Kyle had a good ride on lap 3, I am sure he will tell it .THANK YOU VORRA Ben 6043

[osborne]

co driver of 8028 here- who is desert adiction? We had a good run and finally finished one! had one flat one roll and a miss in the engine but all and all a great day for a couple of unorganized guys with only a 73 year old man with a bunch of gas cans out in the dez for a chase crew. Thanks dad! Big thanks to pro pit even though we did not need them except for a ligh bar allignment, and TRICK fuels for gassing us even though we were too late to sign up with them on fri. night.

[Kyle A]

When we stopped to bum enough fuel to finish and you said all we have is unleaded you could not see how big my smile was ! Pemex is our prefered fuel but your unleaded did just fine. THANK YOU!
We had a great day/night small brake issue on lap 1 cost us about 40 min then clear sialing until last lap when a less than polite TT driver/codawg decided to play games.what I would have given for a nitrous bottle ? The track was kinda like racing the BAJA 500 instead of just brutal. It had silt, rough, fast, technical, rocks. switchbacks ,danger, and a long way around .I think Baja Designs Kyle had a good ride on lap 3, I am sure he will tell it .THANK YOU VORRA Ben 6043

It sure was a great ride! We had a really eventful lap. I really like the way the race was run and the course was awesome! i think this race has a long life ahead with many more entrys in the upcomming years. Thanks Russ, Marty, Jessica, the whole 6043 team, Wes and Jenny and the whole VORRA Crew!

[Baja Jim]

All you racers in So. Cal and So. NV and Arizona don't know what your missing by not coming up to Reno to try a race. Contingency at casino with live MX show, live rock crawler event and live music with temps hovering around 75 at night with high around 90 during the day. Family can hang at one of many casino pools or head to Tahoe during the day! Then you've got a race course thats got loops of over 150 miles long with everything from 100 + mph roads to silt to mountain and technical rocky sections.

VORRA does there best to welcome everyone and make it a fun family event. While the car counts are still low, I believe if some of you would come up and start spreading the word you would find out that its worth the drive!!

I got to drive my 1st truck in a race and the SAMCO 7200 truck and team did not dissapoint! I got to drive a quality truck (maybe a little underpowered) but hey everyone wants more HP! And when we needed some mechanical work the team stepped up and kept the truck moving. The Samco team had a successful race with their 7200 truck 1st Overall, Samco Built 4 wheel drive Rod Hall racing TT 1st in class 1 and 2nd overall and the Heavy Metal Samco prepped Rod Hall Racing H3 Hummer finishing 1st in class.

Everyone should think about putting the next VORRA race on their calendar as its a 2 day endurance race of 12 hours per day and should be something special. Check out VORRA.NET for details.

[jackassracing89]

Nice Job Jim. You killed it. And props to everyone who finished the first Vorra 500 mile race. 45% finish ratio, not bad at all.
I've been going to Vorra races for 26 years. missed maybe 9 races in that time, and I must say, from the Thursday show and shine, to tech and contengency, to the hotel, the race course and even having the awards in the showroom. This Vorra race was the most organized and the most fun race I have ever been to.
I've been to every Score race at one time or another , Bap, RATR, and V2R, and while all are great races, and some even on my list of cant miss, this race just had that feel. And next year plans to be bigger and better. Make your plans now, trust me, you will not want to miss this reace next year.

Plus the season is not over yet.... On labor day a 24 hr race.(12hr sat., 12hr Sunday). another insane race for sure. Following that are first short course race in Reno and the grand daddy of them all our halloween race at prarie city which rumor has it some 1450 guys are coming up to race and make Group T a huge class.

Vorra is on the up, and with all the land closures, and course concerns with BlM, Vorra looks to be a steady and safe place to continue on in northern Nevada

[madmyres]

Team Myres Race Report for the Master Pull USA 500:

The 2011 Master Pull USA 500 was Team Myres second race as drivers with a new truck. So the game plan going in was to finish and see the checkered flag! As a race team we were traveling into unchartered territory attempting 528 miles. Considering I spent most of my time fixing broken shock mounts from the Yerington race, we once again came into this race with only a few miles on the truck to make sure everything was working correctly. Besides a couple of temperamental gauges, everything seemed to be in order come on Thursday night. This gave my wife Debbie and I an opportunity to prerun the course Friday morning from Pit 1 to Pit 3 then we had to give it up and get to tech inspection.

Saturday morning I get to the start/finish at 7:30am with 3 ½ hours of sleep and one of my best friends, RJ, that has never ridden in a race truck as my co-driver. It was going to be a learn by fire experience for him, but considering we had lost my other co-driver to a family emergency 2 days before the race…. we had no choice. While trying to get RJ tuned in to what was about to happen, we somehow wasted enough time getting ready that we almost missed our 1st place start position. When I pulled up George was tapping his foot and shaking his head saying ”I’ve been looking for you”, then got the green flag moments later. Whew! That was close. So being first off on a section of course I have never run only got me mixed up in the first few miles. You can mark some of it up for just being new at this, but I thought I misread one of the markers and turned around to make sure I was on the right road (which I was). Just as I realized that my mistake wasn’t a mistake….here comes the H3 Hummer. I had just enough time to stab the gas and put them in the dust, but thought to myself, “they pre ran the course and they have a gps”, so I politely let them pass and then just tried to match their pace until we got to the loops. After one more time missing a corner we had them gapping us as we got into the rocky stuff, then at about mile 20 we found ourselves right back on top of them. We were honking to announce our presence and I see the driver point to the right and begin to move to the right. Little did I know, that was supposed to mean “the road is going right” and not “ okay, I see you and I am moving over”. Fortunately, the H3 was slowing for a flat and we were not carrying a lot of speed because the rock I plowed into with the right side tire would have likely rolled us instead of just a bicycle. Once we got back past the H3 it was clear sailing because we were physically first on the track…..we thought….strangely enough we kept picking up dust from someone ahead of us all the way in towards pit 1. Once we got into a nice fast section we caught up close enough that they pulled over before we were eating too much dust from them. So, thanks for pulling over I think? I am not sure what they were doing out there, but It looked like a little buggy with a 9 series number on it when I went by at speed. After that we did have clear sailing for most of my first leg. Once we got to pit 2, I took a splash of fuel and was off in short order for a full lap. Everything seemed to be working great and I was getting into my groove by the time I got to pit 3, when we got around loop mile 111 the truck began to overheat and lose power with an oil temp at 250 and pegging the gauge out. At that point, I realized my electric fans had stopped working! Knowing that the worst thing I could do is shut-off the engine and yet knowing that I had to……I hit the kill switches and felt like my day could be done right then and there with a seized engine. The power lead feeding the fans had went into melt down. After cutting out a melted chunk of wiring, a quick splice and some duct tape. I got one of the two electric fans working, crossed my fingers and flipped the switches…..and that ole ford fired up like nothing happened. With enough water on board to keep the radiator full, we were off for pit 1. This is where I almost stopped at the BFG Pro pit (thanks to BFG for being there in case we needed you and for cheering us on every time we passed) but decided to keep going after the engine temperatures seemed to be fine with just the one fan working. So we set our sites on pit 2 for our first driver change and figured we would fix the other fan then. At pit 2 my wife Debbie took over with my brother Mike as the co-driver. At this point during the race we had determined that once again we were having radio communication issues with the pits unless we were really close. With a quick visual check, we didn’t see any obvious problems with it and decided not to spend any further time on it and just get back to racing. So, after a fill up, a quick fix to get the second fan going again and a warning to Debbie about the switch back sections with cliffs that we did not pre-run, she was off for a full lap.

In her own words, this was Debbie’s story:

Just like in Yerington I had no radio contact with Matt, so thanks to a pair of binoculars and a volunteer we had about a 5 minute visual!! This meant my co-driver and I had to already be in our suits and the 5 minute warning gave us just enough time to throw on the helmet! We had a couple of false alarms because of the baby powder silt all over the truck it made many of the other trucks look white from afar as well! Our white painted expedition stood out much better on the wet ground in Yerington!! Oh well it was good practice. So getting in the truck is a challenge and I am such a rookie I still don’t know how to buckle myself in! Our entire pit crew was made up of friends and family (thank you all for your efforts), none of them have much of a mechanical background at all and only one races dirt bikes and was excellent at getting the dump cans ready and throwing in the fuel! But, the team worked together and with a little shouting and running around like chickens with heads cut off we still managed to have better pit times than Yerington! Go figure. Anyway, Matt made a wire fix and shouted some instructions my way about some dangerous cliff areas, a big deep breath and off I went!! The truck feels so powerful and I love the purr of the engine, all the way until Pit 3 I was keeping a pretty fast pace (for my comfort level and a little beyond). I was amazed to hear later that my speed was very close to Matt’s for that section of the track! I did however manage to hit a couple of rocks pretty hard and I thought I was hearing a knock under my foot. But, a quick visual at pit 3 turned up nothing and off I went. The engine oil temp was creeping up after pit 3 and of course we start climbing a pretty steep hill! I had to get out of the gas to allow it to cool down and here comes the blue Hummer! I couldn’t believe it! I was able to keep them at my rear in the dust but, because we were having to putt up the hill I had to let them go by!! I knew I was sacrificing the first place spot, but there was a lot of racing left to do and I couldn’t risk blowing it up!! I just had to keep that good old thought in my head about just finishing and with so much racing left to do I also had to remind myself that you never know what could happen to the other team!! It took me awhile to get losing out of my mind but I eventually just got back to the track and having a blast! I have learned in a very short period of time and some trial by fire that you race the track, not the other racers!! Especially a team as experienced as the Hall team!! Congrats!! So, picking a line and going forward we finally make it up the mountain that never seemed to end and down the other side, what a ride. The engine temp was finally starting to come down and to my relief ahead was a great fast section of track, across the bottom of the lake bed! I could see the nice long dust trail of the Hummer and I nailed it!! We don’t have a speedo in our ride so we just go by the RPM’s and good old fashion seat of the pants, but I was going fast enough that the wind coming in the cab was bubbling out the visor and was lifting our helmets up and shaking them around uncontrollably!! I even had the feeling that the front end was floating when I would try to make slight adjustments with the steering wheel nothing was happening, it was like the front tires were not even touching the track….Yikes!!! I wasn’t backing off though, at one point I had to tell my co driver that my foot was on the floor cuz I was just having a blast!! Then I was starting to get into just some little grooves and the powder was coming back but, I was still in the gas. The little grooves started to turn into baby ruts and in no time they were getting deeper. I was still in the gas and started to back off a little when the truck started rocking side to side! Wow, the ruts were grabbing at the tires and the rocking was getting harder, then my co driver says, “don’t let those ruts get you sideways” Man, he shouldn’t have said that! The second he shut his mouth here comes the rear end! I still don’t know what I did to recover from that but I did and immediately we dove into a sharp left rutted out powder berm!! I drifted totally sideways, caught a rut and hopped sideways up and over the berm and came to a stop on top of it in the bush! But, it wasn’t the stop that was sooooo exciting it was the slow motion tidal wave of powder heading straight for the cab and completely covered us and the cab and the track! I had to wait a good minute before I could see which way the track went!! My co driver just says, “that was lovely!” and off we went!! There were more times on the track before pit 1 that we got splashes of powder but, that was the most memorable!! We made it to pit 1 but still no radio contact so I had no idea what kind of pace I was running, was I running like a grandma out here or what! So, I just kept my foot in it when I could and had to back out of the gas a few more times to let it cool down! I was completely out of my comfort zone with some of those tight mountain trails with cliffs that seemed to dare us to get too close. The loose powder going down those steep hills and the rear end just floating and trying to come around every chance it got was enough too make me wonder if we were gonna make it in one piece!! It didn’t help that every now and then we would see some unfortunate breakage of other racers! The closer we got to the climb into pit 2, the more broken racers we saw!! Sorry guys! It gave me the gut check though to just finish!!!!! Coming off of the final mountain climb I could see pit 2, where I knew my husband was anxiously awaiting to get back in!! We still couldn’t reach anyone on the radio but, I knew they could see us coming. Anyway, those ruts were so bad coming down that final stretch and the silt had been beaten up so much I think it was even finer than powder and it was brutal getting through it! Thankfully we had four wheel drive because I felt like we were sinking!! I just stayed in the gas to keep us afloat and I didn’t dare stop for nothing!! Finally leveling out and slowing down for pit 2 I must say I was super hot, tired, and relieved my husband was doing the last leg!! Pulling into the pit to do the change out was fast paced again but, by this time everyone was an expert so it was smooth. Matt had an opportunity to check the fan because I told him it was still running hot and he discovered another wire problem and we were only running on one fan again!! So, that made me feel much better about taking it easy knowing it probably would have been a definite engine failure to push too hard. What an awesome ride!! I think I was in the truck about 4-1/2 or so hours, I’m excited to see official lap times!
That’s my story! Thanks again to our rookie pit crew and to VORRA for an awesome event, and congrats to the Hall crew!

Debbie Myres

Now back to my side of the story for the finish of the race:

So around 7:00 pm we do our last driver change and fuel fill at pit 2. I get back in the truck for the run to the finish and with a quick reminder to myself of the goal…… “FINISH”….I am off. The truck still was working just great but the track had gone to hell and the silt had got real bad in places. This is where I was loving my 4 wheel drive. There was a lot of one handed as I tried to shade my eyes driving directly into the setting sun on our way to pit 3 and boy was I glad when it finally set behind the mountain. Before reaching the rock garden after pit 3 and darkness had settled in and gave us our first chance to try out the new lights (other than annoying my neighbors with them prior to the race). My new lights were good but could have been better, so I just ran a little more conservative pace for the sections at night. By the time we got to pit 1 we had lost 1 spot and the one that was still working was getting out of adjustment and pointing at the ground in front of me rather than way out front of the truck. I decided that I did not want to waste the time to tighten and re-adjust the lights, so we headed out from pit 1 for the finish line. I once again found myself on a section of track we had not pre run. I loved the fast section of pole line road and then we got to the descent! Don’t get me wrong….I liked it, but I was low enough on fuel that the truck stalled about 7 times coming down that rocky steep cliff section and losing the power steering and power brakes on that section was a little sketchy. With a healthy fear of drive off a cliff, I was able to muscle it down the hill with new indentations in the steering wheel. Once we got down to the flat section I just took it easy on the throttle and took it in for the checkered flag at about 11:16 pm! We finished in just a little over 14 hours and 46 minutes. We took 2nd in the Full Metal class with a time that was a little over 39 minutes behind the Halls H3 and by the unofficial time sheets at the award ceremony; I think we took 8th overall. What a great course and a great day!




I can’t tell you how happy we are to have finished our 1st attempt at a 500 mile race. It was an experience of a lifetime that my wife and I will never forget. A huge thanks goes out to VORRA and the VORRA-Teers for such an awesome event, to my co-driver RJ for doing an awesome with the “on the job training” environment, to my wife and my brother for bringing the truck back in one piece and giving us a chance at a finish, to Bayshore Truck Equipment for their help with parts, to Samco for his continuous help living this dream, to my friends Billy and Lori Patterson for their financial donation and a special thanks to my rookie pit crew of Scott, Flora, Rhonda, Randy, Dan, Deb, Michelle, and Matt for figuring it out on the fly! You guys did an awesome job keeping us on the track! Now, I am off to see if I can sell an arm and a leg so I can afford the Fallon 24 hour race. Holy crap…….what am I thinking…24 hours for my 3rd race…I think I have been hugely infected by the racing bugging. This could take some time to get it out of my system!

Matt
Team Myres #863

Many other post race stories have been post at this link http://www.vorra.net/index.php?optio...905&Itemid=131.

[Desert Addiction]

co driver of 8028 here- who is desert adiction? We had a good run and finally finished one! had one flat one roll and a miss in the engine but all and all a great day for a couple of unorganized guys with only a 73 year old man with a bunch of gas cans out in the dez for a chase crew. Thanks dad! Big thanks to pro pit even though we did not need them except for a ligh bar allignment, and TRICK fuels for gassing us even though we were too late to sign up with them on fri. night.

My name is Wrangell and my Bro in law is James, we were the guys at mile marker 135. There is a y in the road there and we were keeping you guys going the right way. You guys went around our barrier and then slid past my Red Dodge Diesel and camper. Thought you were going to swap up for down LOL. No big deal.

[osborne]

I dont remember that. I dont think it was us. anyway thanks for the hard work. we had a great time.