Puro Offroad

Roger Norman drove the last lap to victory after teammate Larry Roeseler had spotted him a 10-minute lead driving the first three of four laps in the No. 8 Norman Motorsports Ford F-150 race truck, capturing the overall and SCORE Trophy-Truck victory Saturday at the 13th Annual SCORE Terrible’s Primm 300 desert race. With Norman earning his first career SCORE Trophy-Truck race win and Roeseler his second, the duo covered the rugged 288-mile race in four hours, 50 minutes and 20 seconds, averaging a ground-pounding 59.52 miles per hour while covering the four laps over the rugged 72-mile desert race course in Primm, Nev., 45 miles south of Las Vegas.
Roeseler, Irvine, Calif., started seventh in the star-studded field of 20 starters in SCORE Trophy-Truck in the elapsed-time race, was second after the first lap, moved ahead on lap 2 and extended it to just over 10 minutes on lap three before turning the wheel over to Norman, the Reno, Nev., businessman who owns the Crystal Bay Casino for the final lap. The victory almost slipped away on the final lap when the brakes went out forcing Norman to drive nearly 50 miles of uncertainty before winning the race by one minute, 48 seconds. Roeseler run consistent laps of 1:09:23, 1:10:19 and 1:11:10 before Norman’s last lap struggle turned into a lap of 1:19:18.

Las Vegas Brian Collins not only closed the gap during the final lap, but actually took the lead by nearly a minute on corrected time before two flats in the final 10 miles put him back into second place at the checkered flag in the No. 12 Collins Motorsports Mopar Dodge Ram1500. Collins finished in4:52:08, averaging 59.15 mph.

Keeping SCORE Trophy-Trucks from sweeping the podium was the All German Motorsports unlimited Class 1 BMW-powered Jimco open-wheel desert race car driven by Germany’s Armin Schwarz and Martin Christensen of Escondido, Calif. With Schwarz starting and driving the first half of the race and Christensen bringing their car across the finish line in 4:58:54, averaging 57.81mph. It was the second Class 1 win of the year for Schwarz, a former World Rally Championship series star, and Christensen, a veteran SCORE desert racer.
SCORE’s 35th anniversary season continued with 86 survivors out of 124 starters, competing in 17 Pro and 2 Sportsman classes for cars and trucks finishing within the seven-hour time limit in the elapsed-time race.

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The AlgoDyne Green Power Racing Team duo of Nasser Saleh Al-Attiyah and Swedish co-driver Tina Thörner clinched a stunning victory in the 2008 Baja Spain Aragon, round three of the FIA International Cup for Cross-Country Bajas, for the Trebur-based X-raid team. The Qatari was in complete control from the start of the demanding rally, held in high temperatures and dry, dusty conditions in the area around Zaragoza in Spain, and duly confirmed his third successive victory in the prestigious FIA Baja series at the wheel of a BMW X3 CC. His winning margin over Spanish runner-up Joan Roma was an emphatic 9m 08s. The retirement of his main championship rival Boris Gadasin now means that Al-Attiyah takes an unofficial 23-point lead to the next round of the series in Hungary in August. X-raid Portugal’s Filipe Campos finished behind Roma in third place and X-raid Russia’s Leonid Novitskiy was a fine fourth. Argentina’s Orlando Terranova climbed back to eighth overall after lengthy delays on Friday in his BMW X3 CC and set the second fastest time on the sixth stage on Sunday.

“This was a major result for our team,” said a delighted X-raid’s team director Sven Quandt. “It has taken five years for us to achieve a convincing victory against Mitsubishi, but we have achieved that here. Nasser was in control on every stage and I was also impressed with Campos’s driving. Both their cars were fitted with the new suspension and we were delighted with the improvements. Al-Attiyah set the fastest time through the 5.42km Teruel super special stage on Thursday evening and headed into the first of Friday’s selective sections with a 2.3-second advantage over Spain’s Joan Roma. Filipe Campos set the fourth fastest time in his X-raid Portugal car, while X-raid drivers Terranova, Saby and Novitskiy were classified fifth, sixth and eighth. Moniz da Maia was 13th. The first 125.15km selective section on Friday morning took crews from Calamocha to Teruel and Al-Attiyah extended his overall lead over Roma to 36 seconds by taking the fastest time. Campos, Terranova and Saby were fourth, fifth and sixth and held similar places in the overall classification, although Saby withdrew from the event and announced his retirement from the sport at the end of the section.