Racing News
The Barstow Shake Down
December 3rd, 2011 - In its first time out, Fabtech's Stock Full F250 placed 2nd in the MORE Toys for Tots 200 race in Barstow, California. As a team, we chose to race the MORE Toys for Tots 200 race to practice and prepare for chasing a championship next season in the Best in the Desert race series. We felt racing in this rocky Barstow course would give us a good idea of how hard we could drive the Fabtech Ford F250 next season in the faster and more forgiving race courses of the Arizona and Nevada deserts.
We also chose to enter the truck in the 1450 class since there were no other trucks entered that met the Stock Full class qualifications we would be racing in next season. MORE's 1450 class is an open sportsman class that allows trucks with long travel, linked suspension and has unlimited motor and tire rules. While most of the trucks in this class should be faster than our Fabtech F250 with its stock-style suspension, we felt it would be a good opportunity to race against faster vehicles. We also felt that our combined racing and logistic experience as well as our thorough race-prep on the truck would allow us to be competitive.
We started the race with Fabtech owner and CEO Dave Winner behind the wheel with Chris Amrein co-driving. Dave quickly settled in and ran two consistent laps with zero problems before handing the truck off in 2nd place to Steve Erdelyi to drive and Matt Coates navigating. This was Matt's first race ever as a co-driver and he passed the test, calling out turns, watching the trucks temp gauges, and making sure Steve kept a consistent pace. Steve closely matched Dave's lap times and after five laps, got out to let Chris Amrein get in to drive the final 2 laps.
At the checkered flag, the Fabtech Ford F250 pulled off a solid 2nd place finish. The Deaver springs and Dirt Logic shocks were truly punished by the countless holes and rocks on the race course, and we relentlessly beat the General Grabber race tires and still finished without any flats.
In the end, we agreed that as a team we had met 100% of our goals at this race. We ran consistent speeds with all 3 drivers, broke-in our new co-driver, and we put our chase crew to the test fueling and pitting for the truck.
We look forward to racing for the championship in 2012!