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BITD: Henderson 300: Team Hummer preview

Team HummerÂ® To Wrap Up 2004 Season at Henderson's `Terrible 300' Reno, NV - November 30, 2004: Coming off their fourth consecutive Baja 1000 victory in as many years, Team HUMMER now has adjusted their focus to the final race of the 2004 ...

Edited: Aug 28, 2009, 3:20 AM

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Team Hummer® To Wrap Up 2004 Season at Henderson's `Terrible 300'

Reno, NV - November 30, 2004: Coming off their fourth consecutive Baja 1000 victory in as many years, Team HUMMER now has adjusted their focus to the final race of the 2004 season, the Best in the Desert Henderson's `Terrible 300', December 2-4 in Henderson, Nevada. A new addition this year to BitD's racing schedule, there's more at stake here then another victory for Team HUMMER's Chad Hall in the #8106 H1 Pickup. Currently second in Best in the Desert's Silver State Series points championship, three points off the lead, Chad will be concentrating his attention on winning the 2004 series points battle. To do that he needs to win or finish the race two positions ahead of Greg Foutz in the #8101 Ford F-250, who is the current leader going into the final race of the season. With both the first and second place trucks so close in the standings, this should be a very exciting race with both Hall & Foutz pulling out all the stops to come out on top.

It has been a good year for Rod & Josh Hall's #4106 H2 SUV, with one second and two firsts in the last three Best in the Desert races. However, two blown differentials and a damaged transmission at the Parker race, forced Josh Hall to retire the H2 early from that event, putting us 40 points down to the points leader, Mark Stein in the #4101 Ford Expedition. In spite of our success since the Parker race in February, the H2 is currently third in the points chase, 32 points behind Stein and 19 points in back of John Sunderland in his # 4102 Ford. We could theoreti- cally move up in the standings if we have a good finish and either Stein or Sunderland fail to finish, but, given the quality of both of these teams, the chances of either or both of the Fords dropping out of the race are not in our favor.

A brief primer on how the points are awarded at BitD races would be in order here: Everyone receives 5 points for starting a race and another 10 points for finishing. At Parker the winner was awarded an additional 30 points for the victory, giving Stein, in this case, a total of 45 points for the win. Even the fifth place finisher received 33 points but when you DNF (do not finish) all you come away with are the 5 starting points. So, if you DNF a single race and win the other four, chances are you still will not be in contention for the year end points championship.

Competing in the SCORE `Baja 1000', did not give us much time to get the trucks back to Reno and prepped so we can get them down to Henderson for the final BitD event. About nine days in the shop is all we had once you factor in travel time for the 1650 mile trip back from La Paz! Fortunately, the H1 required only some basic prep work, the replacement of all the control arms and half shafts and a complete rebuild on all 4 shocks. Normally we would replace the transmission but the Hydra-Matic, supplied by GM Powertrain was working so well at the Baja 1000 that we decided to leave it in and focus more attention on the other areas of the truck.

The H2, required a little more attention, since we rolled it over in Baja. Clearly, there was no time to deal with the cosmetic damage, other than to jack out the bent sheet metal so it doesn't get in our way. Sam Cothrun stripped down the entire front end and replaced all the suspension parts, half shafts, control arms and rebuilt the shocks. Similar in scope to what was done to the H1 but more in depth repairs to the front suspension had to be carried out.

So we are ready for the Best in the Desert Henderson's `Terrible 300'. Although the course layout will not be revealed to us until Friday morning during an escorted pre-run, we know that it is going to be five (5) laps around a 65 mile race course in the Mojave desert 15 miles south of Henderson, Nevada for a total of 325 miles. When the dust settles on Saturday, both the Team HUMMER #4106 H2 SUV and the #8106 H1 pickup can be expected to finish well at Henderson's `Terrible 300' and in the final Silver State Series points standings.

- grt

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