Vegas to Reno

Vegas to Reno the long way. The first day of the BITD – Best in the Desert – Vegas to Reno 3-day desert race is in done, the second day on it’s way and the Nevada desert handed out severe penalties to a bunch of the off-road racing nation. At 18:30 less than 50 cars and trucks had finished the first 333-miles of the 2009 BITD Vegas to Reno race. Leading the field in his #31 McMillin – BFGoodrich – FOX Racing Shox trophy truck was Baja 1000 champion, Andy McMillin and his co-driver Todd Tenbroek. McMillin charged off the line in clean air and by race mile 99 at checkpoint 3 he had a solid 5-minute lead over the entire car and truck classes. McMillin had no problems all day long as he and Tenbroek ran a clean and strategic race from the beginning. Andy McMillin has set the bar high and is no doubt the one to beat here at this epic race. However, the day was filled with intense carnage all along the race course as mile after mile of the challenging Nevada desert took its toll on the nation’s top racers. Early in the contest the Baja 1000 Class 1 winners, John Herder and Chuck Dempsey , suffered an electrical issue that forced them to swap out the entire engine harness before being able to get back in the contest and that problem have pushed them to the back of the finishing field. Hot temperatures and dusty conditions barraged pit crews along the entire course and in the later afternoon near Tonopah, Nevada the temperatures declined at the higher elevation.
For live tracking with TDCOM e-viewer click the banner below after the page has loaded in full. Below you will find more links for live race tracking of the Vegas to Reno desert off-road race held in 3 stages.

The elevation in Tonopah, NV is approximately 6290 feet. The 3-day format of this year’s Vegas to Reno race allowed racers to stage into a “free zone” after crossing the checkered flag but once they drove into the work area each team only had 1 hour to service/prep their race vehicles for next days race. While in the free-zone only the driver and co-drivers could evaluate what needed to be done in the work zone and many teams had specific crew-members ready to work on different components of the race vehicles. Any extra time spent working on their race vehicles is applied to next day’s overall finishing time. So teams are using clear cut strategy in the work zone. In fact, the work zone was so overloaded that teams waited in the free zone for others to finish. The entire town of Tonopah, Nevada is filled with some 10,000 off road racing enthusiasts that have lined US 95 on both sides of the street with over 1000 motor homes, trailers and race support vehicles!

At BajaRacing Live, the #1 Baja Racing News Live webcasting website from Baja California you can find more live tracking options of the Vegas 2 Reno race here….

Unofficial V2R Day 1 race results:

Class 1400 top five finishers :

1)#31 Andy McMillin

2)#97 BJ Baldwin

3)#35 Jason Voss

4) #76 Jesse Jones

5) #51 Kory Scheeler

Class 1500 top five finishers :

1)#1517 Kevin Colan

2) #1570 Kory Halopoff

3) #1575 Pat Dean

4) #1549 Sam Berri

5) #1588 Gary Weyrich

Vegas 2 Reno overall Car/Truck top 10 :

1) #31 Andy McMillin

2) #97 BJ Baldwin

3) #1517 Kevin Colan

4) #1570 Kory Halopoff

5) #35 Jason Voss

6) #1575 Pat Dean

7) #1549 Sam Berri

#76 Jesse Jones

9) #51 Kory Scheeler

10) #1588 Gary Weyric