Reno, NV - The ‘Las Vegas 300’, the fourth race of Best in the Desert Racing Association’s (BITD) Silver State Series, has been expanded from the previous 200 mile format and this year will consist of three laps around an 88 mile course. The festivities for this annual event begin on Friday, October 13th with tech inspection at the new Southcoast Hotel in Las Vegas. Saturday morning, the action moves to the start line in Jean, Nevada, 30 miles south of town.

Chad Hall will be behind the wheel of the first Team HUMMER entry to start in the #8102 H1 Alpha pickup truck. Chad had his share of troubles at the ‘Vegas to Reno’ race in the newly built H1 pickup when a broken motor mount led to a host of troubles which culminated in having to retire the truck 315 miles into the race. Since then H1 chief mechanic, John Cumming, has installed new motor mounts, replaced our in-house shocks with new Fox Shox at all four corners and modified the skid plate to allow an exit route for debris that gets sandwiched between the skid plate and the engine. After a successful test last month in the desert near Parker, Arizona, he feels the “learning curve” on the H1 is flattening out and expects a good finish at the ‘Las Vegas 300’.

Coming off a dominating performance at the ‘Vegas to Reno’, Josh Hall brings Team HUMMER’s defending stock production class SUV points champion H2 to this year’s ‘Las Vegas 300’ without having to do much work other than the usual race prep. According to Chief H2 mechanic, Sam Cothrun, the H2 emerged from the ‘Vegas to Reno’ in tact and all of the parts should be able to hold up to the abuse of another 300 miles of desert racing.”We’ll wait to do our next major prep until after this race, so that everything is fresh for the Baja 1000”. We did notice a problem with the fuel pump mount on the fuel cell a few weeks ago so Sam took the cell out of the truck and sent it back to the manufacturer, on the east coast, for repairs. For a time it seemed that our fuel cell had been lost in shipping but after making a number of calls we learned that it had been quaranteened in Ohio, when a gas smell was detected coming from the box. The shipper informed us that a special “environmental” inspector had to be called in to approve the contin-ued shipment of the cell, a process which immediately meant that we would not have our fuel cell in time for this race. After a few frantic hours on the phone, we were able to locate an off the shelf 44 gallon fuel cell that would fit so we were back in business, although with a fuel capacity of 11 gallons less than we are used to having. Good thing this is a loop race.

Although the #3111 Team HUMMER H3 suffered an engine failure only 60 miles into the ‘Vegas to Reno’ race, Thad Stump and the crew from the GM Proving Ground took it back to Mesa, AZ and installed the back-up motor so Rod could take it to the SCORE Primm 300 on September 8-9 in Primm, Nevada. With only 60 miles on the truck it was ready to go once the engine was installed and Rod, Thad and co-rider Jake Povey showed up at the ‘Primm 300’ winning their second Score race of the year and putting the H3 on top of the race for the 2006 SCORE Mini-Stock points championship. The only problem the H3 experi-enced was a minor electrical glitch which turned out to be a broken field wire leading to the alternator and the problem was repaired after the race.

Back at the Desert Proving Ground, the H3 has been prepped and tested for the ‘Las Vegas 300’. Matt Laramie and Doug Moore have also added stiffer rear springs to help keep the back end off the bump stops. Once again, Team HUMMER stands ready to extend their winning streak and we are looking forward to another successful event.

To learn more about Team HUMMER, visit: www.rodhallracing.com.
To learn more about HUMMER vehicles visit: www.hummer.com.