March 22nd, 2011.Vorra Prairie City, First Race First Podium!

When asked about the race, owner/driver Jake Hallenbeck said, “What can you say, we are a new team with a new un-tested truck. We had no idea what to expect, but we went home with a podium, a lot of knowledge, and had an awesome weekend”.

Prior to the race, the team was very limited on knowledge of offroad racing. Jake Hallenbeck and Matt Pillsbury come from a background of going slow. Very slow. They competed in UROC, Calrocks, and WEROCK national rock crawling events until 2004. This is a new change and a completely new pace for the team.

The new Marked Motorsports Toyota truck was built for the desert, so the truck was lightened by removing everything that wasn’t needed for short course. The truck felt planted all the way around the track. Our Radflo racing shocks hooked up great making our toy very easy to drive.

For all three motos, the toyota was right on the rear bumper of a much lighter, and faster class 7200 truck of Sam Cothrun. Lap after lap, Jake was nearly matching his pace. In the final moto the Toyota just didn’t have the power or suspension to reel in Sam.

“We hope to keep the momentum going for the next prairie city race”. With the advise of experienced off road racer Mike Koenig, we will be changing a few key things for the next short course race to hopefully be able to reel in Sam.

This was also our first time using a Go Pro HD camera. We got some spectacular footage of a couple close up rollovers to share. We hope to have the footage uploaded and edited shortly.

Thanks again to our team and all our sponsors, Axial Racing, CKRC Hobbies, BFGoodrich, Radflo Racing Shocks, Ballistic Fabrication, and Summit Racing.

Next Race: May 27-30, VORRA short course