Racing with Team HUMMER: The Night Before

Today’s contingency festivities allowed folks like Rod Hall, the top dog at Team HUMMER, a chance to meet and greet some fans and members of the media. But now that today is almost over – it’s time to think about the start of the Terrible’s Town 250 that starts early tomorrow morning.

Since Josh Hall’s #8111 HUMMER H2 SUT leaves the starting gate with me in it at 5:48 AM local time, this post will be fairly brief. 5:48 AM may not sound that early, but that means at 4:45 AM the trucks have to be staged with everyone inside, which means breakfast and getting the trucks ready at 4 AM, and getting up around 3:30 AM to get into my race suit. Now does it sound early?

Since Team HUMMER races the stock class, some inspections of the vehicles to insure the vehicles haven’t been modified beyond the rules were on order today. All of Team HUMMER’s race trucks went through that process fairly quickly today.

Co-driver Sam Cothrun went over my job responsibilities for the race. Safety first – he showed me all the fire extinguisher locations and a few emergency pull switches that are reserved for larger fire concerns. Then I learned where the jack was secured and how to remove the spare tire in case of a blow-out mid-race. During the race it will be my responsibility to keep and eye in the specially placed, huge rear-view mirror for any other competitors coming up behind us, and communicate any other concerns via our in-helmet communications system. If others in the race don’t feel like moving over to allow another competitor to pass, it’s fairly customary to give that racer a ‘love-tap’ to the rear end. However at high speeds, this can be a debilitating move for some.

If you want to track the progress of the #8111 car, or the entire 8100 class to see the competition, check out Terrible’s 250 tracking site which is now live. The next time I post we should have the official race results – stay tuned!