DNF Racing earns a podium spot at the 2011 SNORE Dethrone So Cal 250 held in Plaster City, Ca. The #1429 TOTAL CHAOS equipped Toyota 2wd truck driven by Dan Vance & co pilot Austin “Fish” Farner battled 4 laps to a 3rd place finish in the 1450 truck class. 24 drivers took the green flag making it the 2nd largest vehicle class entered in the event. Gusting wind and temperatures in the 90’s forced drivers to navigate through thick blinding dust. 187 starters on the 50 mile loop battled the technical race course and deteriorating terrain that transformed every lap into deep whoop sections, soft hill climbs & scattered thick silt beds.

Dan Vance drew 16th in the starting order, forcing him to leave the 2 truck starting line back on row 8. He quickly charged his way up from the rear of the pack through the lingering dust to run a pace with the lead trucks that both drew much better starts. By the end of lap 1 less than 3 minutes separated the top 4 drivers in class 1450.

Navigating in the thick dust and chasing down slower cars in the silt beds began to cause Vance’s Toyota truck to run at above normal engine temperatures at the start of lap 2. Focusing on the finish, Vance and Farner backed off the leaders pace to drop the engines operating temperatures while they ran in clean air. “Heating issues caused from us passing cars and having silt packed in the radiator hurt us,” Dan Vance stated after the race. “The course was technical and fun. We had hard pack then soft terrain like Glamis.”

DNF Racing pits only saw action during the drivers change and scheduled fuel stop at the start of lap 3. Austin Farner jumped in the driver seat with TC’s marketing director Nicole Vaughan navigating on lap 3 and maintained the teams 3rd place position in Vance’s Toyota the last 2 laps. With a large gap between the 3rd and 4th place trucks, Austin “Fish” Farner was able race at a pace to keep the operating temp cool enough to go the scheduled 200 mile distance. Austin stated after the race, “”It was awesome to have a flawless day. We never had to get out of the truck. Besides it running warm on the final 2 laps it was a perfect race. The truck was dialed and the TOTAL CHAOS suspension with Fox Shox made the rough course seem a lot smoother than it looked!”

Flats, roll over’s, getting stuck in the silt beds or damage to equipment left drivers scattered all over the course. Lap after lap the race claimed more and more competitors and the attrition claimed 68 drivers.

Sponsors: TOTAL CHAOS Fabrication, GoodYear, Fox Shox, Currie Enterprises, Off Road Warehouse, T-Ten, BMS, LIFT Safety, K&N, & McKenzies.

Photo Credits: Shawn Heck

May 7th – Mark your calendars and plan to attend! Start position drawing for the SNORE SoCal 250 will be hosted by ORW (Off Road Warehouse) in Escondido, CA. This ORW store is planning a great afternoon for this pre-race event.

In addition to the drawing, this event will feature special one-day only ORW/Escondido pricing on select items for both racers and chasers. Plans also include a raffle, an outdoor barbeque and a race vehicle display.

Drawing will start at 12:00 noon at ORW. Representatives from SNORE will be on hand to meet and greet everyone that attends. For racers wishing to enter this start position drawing, go to snoreracing.net for information.

ORW is located at 2645 Auto Park Way in Escondido. For further information contact Wally Palmer at 760.746.3193 or email wally@orwmail.com

DRIVE WTC Townsel Memorial

DRIVE returns to Plaster City after their summer hiatus and once again proves they put on some of the best and safest off-road racing in the country. With over 65 volunteers, 16 rovers, life flight helicopters, introduction of the hot pit and fuel containment to their desert series; DRIVE continues to prove that they are on the forefront of putting on safe yet fun and competitive desert racing. With a meticulously marked racecourse through what has always been known as some of the toughest terrain any desert has to offer, DRIVE put on a GP style two-heat race format with morning and afternoon races with overall times determining finishing spots.

Ross Mattox

Heat 1: Cody Robinson had a good lead in1600 but engine troubles took him out of contention leaving Ross Mattox in the top spot for the weekend.

First in class 1300 went to Mark Valverde who looked to have a flawless day

Heat 2: Steve Looney took both heats with ease; besting the biggest class (1450) in the field with a combine time of 2hrs 26min 12sec., eleven minutes faster than the competition

Heat 3: Jeff Dickerson of Brawley Ca. took the class 1 and o/a win for the weekend. Jeff had an intense battle with Kyle Conlon for the o/a position but caught a break when Conlon lost a CV on the last lap. An added bonus for the Dickerson family was Jeff’s son Broc took the win in trophy kart with an awesome third lap pass in the rough stuffing the front end with an explosion of dirt.  Broc made the pass stick and brought it in for a half car lead at the finish. Jeff was unavailable for comment when the results came out but you could tell Jeff was very proud of his son on race day.

Proud dad and son, Jeff and Broc Dickerson

The class nine battle was super tight with Brandon Whitehead taking the win over Jeff Morrison by just 39 seconds

What is WCT Townsel (provided by DRIVE)

On Saturday morning May 16, 2009, Wes Townsel with his two sons, Cody 10 and

Tanner 5, left his wife Jenifer and daughter Hailey at home. They were headed out to go fishing on the East Highline Canal, a normal trip where they had been countless times before, but this time they would not be coming home. As Wes was driving his sons to the canal they were involved in a tragic accident that took all three of their lives.

Not only did this accident leave Jenifer with the unimaginable heartache of losing all three of her boys at once, but it also left her with the burden of having to pay for the services to put them to rest.

Wes and his family are close friends of Larry Cox and his wife Tracy. Most of you know that Larry and Tracy are dedicated volunteers of DRIVE. Larry spends countless hours in the desert with me looking for new courses and Tracy is an important part of our timing team. Wes was also a friend to the off-roading community here in Imperial Valley. We named this race after Wes, Cody, and Tanner to give back to the Cox Family, the Townsels, and to the Imperial Valley Community.

A personal note

As I wrote this, I remembered the day Wes and his sons passed very clearly. I was in Texas for the TORC series race at the Texas Speedway; I got the call from a good friend in the Imperial Valley. Wes and his wife Jenifer were friends I went to school with and had known for the majority of my life; I had many good times with them hanging out with family and friends in the desert. Wes was a person who would go above and beyond for a friend and even more for his family; I’m sure his boys would’ve turned out the same. Wes is sorely missed and this race in his and his son’s honor is only a small way to show how much. Thank you Doug, Larry and all the DRIVE crew for this memorial race.

Top 3 results in each class:

Group A

• 1600

1^st 1619  Ross Mattox

2^nd 1656  Ben Abatti

3^rd 1611  Troy Phelps

• 1300

1^st 1303  Mark Valverde

2^nd 1353  Barry Blue II

3^rd 1311  Polo Ramirez

• 900

1^st 988    Brandon Whitehead

2^nd 987    Jeff Morrison

• 1900

1^st 1904   Sam Rosenberger

Group B

• 1450

1^st 1464   Steven Looney

2^nd 1494   Brian Cully

3^rd 1453   Sean Julian

Group C

• Unlimited Truck

1^st 41      George Rosenbaum

2^nd 80      Robert Wagner

• Class 1

1^st 123    Jeff Dickerson

2^nd 100    Sean McCallum

3^rd 127    Kyle Conlon

• Class 8

1^st 800    Berry Canela

• Class 1000

1^st 1099   Eddie Zimmerman

2^nd 1021   Michael Deardorff

• Class 1200

1^st 1202    Daniel Rinear

2^nd 1278    Greg Farkas

• Class 1400

1^st 1448    Trevor Klat

2^nd 1401    Cameron Reeves

• Class 6/7

1^st 7291    Greg Parker

• Class 550

1st 562    Heather Herrmann

2nd 555    Charles Guy

3rd 556    Stephanie Lozano

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Date: 9-21-10

Location: Competitive Metals – 135 Cypress Lane – El Cajon, Ca 92020

Time: 6:00 PM – 8:00 PM

The purpose of this meeting is to communicate what is going on with permits, racing cost, and the changes we see coming in the future.

Everyone is invited. Like the last meeting, we are asking that you send an e-mail to doug@drive-racing.com as an RSVP so that we can plan for the appropriate amount of people. PLEASE bring a chair. You will be asked to sign up if you want to speak to the group. If we have time after everyone speaks, we will open the floor up to anyone. The group at the last meeting did an amazing job at waiting for their turn to speak and it really made things easy on everyone.

The last meeting was very important to me personally. This meeting will be very important to everyone that enjoys our local desert.

Please RSVP to doug@drive-racing.com and bring a chair this time.

For Immediate Release

7-29-10

Contact: Doug Wasser, 760-791-7663, doug@drive-racing.com

Plaster City Racing Summit

6:00 PM, August 10th

at Competitive Metals

135 Cypress Lane

El Cajon, CA 92020

We will be holding a meeting on August 10, 2010 in an effort to improve racing in Plaster City and we want your input. This meeting is open to anyone that wants to be a part of growing racing in our local desert. Racers, team members, volunteers, businesses, media, chamber of commerce, and promoters are all invited.

Just because DRIVE is organizing the meeting does not mean that it will be all about DRIVE. The goal is to get together as a community of off roaders and put together a plan to improve racing in PC. If we can come together as a group and discuss what the pros and cons are with racing in Plaster City we will, as a group, be able start taking the steps necessary to grow the area into the world class racing that it should be. I am leaving my ego at home for this one. It’s not about me or DRIVE. The promoter sets the stage. The real people that make a race happen are the teams, volunteers, spectators, sponsors, and media. That’s why we are asking you all to get involved and be a part of this. We want to hear your constructive comments and ideas. Once we put a plan together we are going to asking all of you to get involved to help us make it happen.

In order to get the most out of this meeting it needs to run in an orderly and productive fashion. If you want to speak you will need to sign up at the beginning of the meeting and we will call on each person to present their ideas and concerns.

Agenda / Schedule:

6:00 PM – Sign ups to speak to the group

6:15 PM – Opening statements to review the goal and agenda

6:20 PM – 7:20 PM – Time allowed for people that signed up to speak to the group and present their ideas.

7:20 PM – 7:30 PM – Reading of mailed in comments.

7:30 PM – 7:45 PM – Mingle

8:00 PM – Doors close

Please take a few hours out of your day to come and be a part of this process. We will appreciate it greatly. Bring your ideas and a camping chair to sit on. If you absolutely cannot make the meeting you can send a written comment to doug@drive-racing.com and we will share it with the group at the meeting.

Sincerely,

Doug Wasser

RSVP to doug@drive-racing.com

Race-Dezert.com event coverage of the 2010 DRIVE RDC 250 race in Plaster City

Doug Wasser and the DRIVE volunteers continue to turn out some of the best racing in the Plaster City area. “Great racing, great course, DRIVE puts on a first rate event. With desert clean-ups and a great group of volunteers DRIVE makes it an awesome time for the family, the racers, everyone.” Said RDC 250’s overall winner – Sean McCallum.

Next up for the DRIVE series is the WCT Townsel Memorial on September 17th & 18th, don’t miss some of the best racing Southern California has to offer.

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Camburg Engineering testing the Kinetik Trophy Truck in Plaster City

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The guys at Camburg went out with Fox Shox to give the Kinetik Trophy Truck a shakedown and tune the suspension. The truck finished just in time for the Baja 1000 just a few weeks back and had no almost no test time under its hood. Well tunes shocks = Increased Speed.

Next race will be the BITD Parker 425 for a full season of Best in the Desert racing.

Go watch the video:

Race-Dezert.com video of the month coverage of the MDR Sprint to the Dash in Plaster City, CA.

race-dezert.com video of the month at the 2009 MDR Superstition 250 in Plaster City, race coverage

Jesse Ashcraft (78) overalled the Drive Racing ORW Grand Prix race held September 19th. This race also debuted Heidi Steele’s  first time in a Trophy Truck (14).

The race was divided into 2 Heats with 3 Groups each for a total of six races. The two heats results got added up at the end of the day for a single total result. All classes had to run 4 laps per heat (8 total) of 13.5 miles length.

The break between heats allowed the drivers a quick rest and gave room for repairs while the racing action never never stopped and made for some good spectating. Plaster City after all is one of the few places where a race involves spectators off-roading as the entire Off-Road park is open to the public all year around.

On a RDC personal note our staff photographer Art managed some driving duty in the 979 car proofing that we follow what we preach. Awesome!

Want to learn more about the DRIVE series go to their website: LINK

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race-dezert.com monthly off-road video. This month features the 2009 DRIVE Race-Dezert.com 250.

Quality racing is alive and well in Plaster City with race promoter DRIVE, the host of the 3/21/09 Race-Dezert 250 race event. Yes, you read that right! We put on an off-road race! When Doug and Jon of DRIVE approached us in 2008 and pitched the idea of race-dezert.com coming on board as a title sponsor of one of their races in a new series we were a tad skeptical. But the pure drive, energy, and refreshing ideas made it an easy sell and we became believers of DRIVE. With our first race under our dezert hood, we still feel jazzed about what just happened.

Friday contingency started at about 4pm in the desert just a few feet away from the main pit and start/finish line. The weather did its job by providing a slight breeze through the otherwise grueling hot Imperial Valley desert. We set up a RDC booth alongside some of the other vendors and fired up the charcoal barbecue for free hot dogs, chips and drinks for everybody. We met lots of people on our website that we hadn’t met in person before so we can put faces with the names but watch out because now we know what you look like! And we might say, thank goodness for avatars! We had a great time meeting all of you!

To challenge the young upcoming racers, DRIVE held a TrophyKart race that evening. TrophyKarts are limited to children from about 5 to 16 years of age. They raced 5 laps of 1.5 miles each. TrophyKarts have been originally designed for short course racing and their belt drive system wears out almost as quickly as a tire in Nascar, hence the rather short TK race. There was a strong sportsman vibe and everyone gladly agreed to keep having TK races at future DRIVE events.

Saturday morning the race was scheduled to start at 8am but the ambulance DNF’ed before the race even began! The chartered ambulance for the day broke down in route to the event and instead of starting the race without it, Drive was forced to delay the start till 9:40AM. DRIVE handled the situation quickly and communicated well on their 2-way radio channel to inform everyone of the situation as it developed.

After the race start delay there were no more hiccups and the event was flawless for the remainder of the day.

Noah Quantrell

The biggest class was 1400 with 5 starters and 3 finishers. Noah Quantrell took the win. He had battled an overheating transmission that they had to cool down by spraying water over the radiators. Whatever they did seemed to help and they will be back for more down the road. Cameron Reeves had a flawless day securing him 2nd place. The über built T-100 of Dan Unsicker snapped rear wheel studs early in the race and the team scrambled to make emergency repairs on the course. Of course the broken wheel studs let the wheel go, destroying the rear caliber = no rear brakes for most of the race. They also, much like our governor, will be back.

Tucker Trench

A refreshing comeback for racing in Plaster City was the use of Tucker Trench. This historic part of the course hasn’t been used since the days of Fud and every racer we spoke with after the race loved it. “It’s scenic and makes you think you are racing somewhere in Baja” claimed Joe Patteli class 8 racer, finisher and winner of the RDC250. “The last time we raced here in Plaster City was in 1985 and we rolled our truck then…the same truck we raced today with better luck on our side”.

To pull off such a flawless day of racing takes lots of manpower and DRIVE had help from no less than 40 volunteers alongside the course manning road crossings and checkpoints. Elite Auto of El Cajon supplied “Check-Point Care-Packages” consisting of water, snacks and sandwiches. RDC added our own priceless collectible, soon to be historic, RDC250 themed event t-shirts to all racers and volunteers.

So what’s next? For DRIVE it will be the night race on May 16th. For RDC it will be a handful of events the following days. Don’t miss next years RDC250 at a desert near you.

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Off-roader’s only come to the desert to play and don’t give a damn about the playground they are playing in. NOT! Don’t believe it? Read on.

Drive, the new startup promoter of the Imperial Valley, made their 2nd event a volunteer clean up instead of a race. Drive’s “Desert Scrub Down” was able to organize over 100 volunteers from the desert racing community. There were racers, race fans, kids, women and men alike.

ORW donated a great breakfast at around 8AM as volunteers signed in. Shortly after breakfast, Doug of Drive briefed the crowd and then everyone headed out to gather as much trash as possible. Four hours later an entire dumpster was filled up. Now to mix fun with duty there was a scavenger hunt for everybody to participate in. Whoever finds most of the items on the scavenger list gets declared the winner. Later in the early afternoon there where also raffle prizes donated by RDC and fellow offroad businesses and members to some of the lucky ones with the correct digits. The winner of the scavenger hunt was a family with four kids that found almost all of the items! Where on earth did they find the golf ball and balloon in the desert? Amazing whats out there!

Most of the trash found and collected by the clean up crews was non off-road related but unfortunately other trash was. The trash was a mixture of camp-side trash, roadside cans, bottles, old tires, household items and then some rather odd stuff.

“Off-roader’s get it done and are able to organize clean ups with large participation better then any other group” shared Daniel, an off-duty BLM officer, that stopped by on his own time to help the cleaning efforts. Success!

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El Centro, CA – (Jan 22, 2009) – Plaster City will be heating up in March…thanks
in part to the first running of the Race-Dezert.com 250 on March 20th and 21st.
The Race-Dezert 250 will be the second race of the 2009 DRIVE Off-Road
Racing series.

After the resounding success of DRIVE’s first ever race the TROPHYLITE 200 on
Jan 17th, we are very proud to introduce the Race-Dezert.com 250 desert race.
Race-Dezert.com is the leading online news and discussion resource for the
hardcore desert racer and desert racing fan.   “We are very excited about Race-
Dezert.com being a race sponsor and supporting the desert racing community,”
explained DRIVE president Doug Wasser.  The Race-Dezert.com 250 will be
held in the Plaster City OHV area, home to some of the roughest desert terrain in
the Southwest.  Completing this race will be a constant battle of man and
machine vs. the desert terrain.  Drivers will have to constantly balance speed
with control and “knowing when to lift” (off the accelerator).   All standard desert
racing classes will be invited, as well as the recently added UTVs and Off-Road
Karts.  The Race-Dezert.com 250 will consist of two days of racing excitement!
Qualifying for selected classes will be on March 20th.  The main event will start
Saturday, March 21st at 8 am.  For more information as it becomes available, see
www.drive-racing.com and www.race-dezert.com .

The next DRIVE Off-Road Racing event is the Race-Dezert.com 250 on March
21st 2009 in Plaster city.  All classes are invited.  For more details visit
www.drive-racing.com and for up to the minute DRIVE info…visit www.race-
dezert.com.  Look for the DRIVE discussion forum.  See you at the next race!

DRIVE Off-Road Racing holds a 6 race series in Plaster City, 30 minutes west
of sunny El Centro, CA and 1.5 hours east of San Diego, CA .  DRIVE’s mantra is
to provide a safe, fun, fair, and affordable grass-roots desert racing experience
for the desert racers in the Southwest.