Martensen Motorsports

For those of you who were wondering how my first CORR race in a Pro-2 went, here is a quick
summary:

For Friday's first race I started last due to driver error in qualifying. I was working my way up past a
couple of guys about half way through the race when suddenly my truck burst into flames. The engine
compartment is pretty well sealed off, but now I know where its not because the flames were
everywhere. I stopped the truck and bailed out without injury. The track workers took the fire
extinguishers to it and got it put out. After the race I got towed back to the pits where the crew started
tearing it apart to figure out why it caught on fire and the extent of the damage. It turns out that there
was a cap on the engine that closed off an old oil pressure line. This cap either broke or came off
and it shot oil onto the headers
and started the fire. There was a huge mess
from all the powder from the fire extinguishers
and all the spark plug wires and air filter were
burned. The guys worked fevereshly to replace
everything that got burned and clean up the oil
that had sprayed all over everything.

Everyone pitched in to help because we only had
one hour until our next race. We even had the people
from our sponsor, Sauza Tequila, helping out.
With about 15 minutes to spare the guys fired up the
truck. Everything seemed good so they put it
back together and I headed out for the second race.

During the parade lap for the second race, the oil pressure light came on and the oil pressure
suddenly dropped. The truck started smoking badly so I pulled over and bailed out thinking I was on
fire again. Oil was pouring out the bottom of the truck but luckily it wasn't hot enough yet to catch
on fire. That was the good news. The bad news was that I was sitting on the side of the track
watching instead of participating in race 2.

The truck got towed back to the pit for a repeat repair. The guys tore it all apart and discovered that
one of the oil lines had become brittle from the original fire and split open when it got hot again. It
was now about 10:30 PM and the guys went to work again on trying to fix it. The problem
was that now we did not have any more oil lines. So two of the guys took off looking for an all night
truck stop to find some oil lines. They gave up at about 2 AM.

Saturday morning arrived and the guys hit the road again looking for the parts needed to fix the truck.
They finally found what they were looking for and went back to the track to put it all back together for
a 2 PM qualifying. The truck stayed together for qualifying so we were looking good for the race.

In our 3rd and final race of the weekend we started 13th. I spun once on about the 4th lap but kept it
going. The track was very slick and people were spinning out everywhere. I would come into a corner
and pitch the truck sideways and it would just slide through the corner. Eventually I figured out that I
could use the wall to stop the truck from sliding and get it to go straight. So I carried on and ended up
8th out of 15 trucks. I beat NASCAR driver Robby Gordon so I am happy about that!

All in all it was a fun weekend. We worked real hard and overcame a lot of adversity to end up with a
top 10 finish against the best off-road racers in the world.

I want to thank all of my friends and family that helped make this happen, my co-workers for covering
for me when I was gone and Sauza Tequila and Racer Offroad for giving me the opportunity to do
this. I may never get a chance like this again, but at least I got to do it once.