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The Rocky Road to the King of the Hammers
by Jason Scherer
It has already been 3 days since we won the race, but it still hasn’t really sunk in! The rollercoaster ride of both bumps and emotions made it difficult to celebrate the win in victory circle. There are a million stories that happened in less than 5 hours, yet both my co-driver Jason Berger and myself are most proud that we never gave up, even when it seemed our race was over.
If you’ve never seen a desert race start, two cars leave the line side by side in 30 second intervals. We left in the 25th starting position, row 13 (my lucky number). Watching the first cars take off while getting strapped into my car, I was amazed at how far away the leaders had pulled away… 6 minutes and 30 seconds is a long way apart and the thought of capturing the physical lead in the next 82 miles seemed a monumental task. Of course all we needed to do was be able to stay with the overall leaders on corrected time and make sure to keep the car in one piece. We knew that to win this race, you must first finish it!
The first ½ mile passed quickly and we noticed one car already had an issue. The next section had two cars going slower and we picked them off before the cresting a hill that entered into a giant dry lake bed. Melville Dry Lake was a spot that I hoped would be a good passing spot since our car was very fast in the wide open areas. We managed to pick off 3 more cars before the lakebed, then we got into a crazy race with Clint Elett at 90+ MPH! He wouldn’t let us by but I finally overtook him at 100 MPH on a rougher line, and then I was able to pass a few others on a left turn on the inside. Next was one of the only cars we had to bump to pass, but they eventually moved over. We came into some really rough terrain but kept pushing hard and took 3 more cars within the next mile. We picked some good lines and took a few more cars one by one. Once I spotted one of my picks for the fastest car in the race, the Kirby Off-Road team, I was warmed up and in full focus. I could feel the metal bending as we smashed through the whoops that were taller than the car when we dropped into each wash. The Kirby guys let us by and now only 4 cars were left in front of us... At race mile 8.
We kept pushing and came up on Jeff Mello who let us by clean. Next was Tom Wayes who made us work for the pass, then Randy Slawson and then Matt from Team Trail Gear who was fast even while running on a flat tire!
As we exited the really tight stuff, the helicopter was hovering right over us. I pointed out to my co-driver Jason Berger that the cameraman's shoes were un-tied. He said, "keep your eyes on the road and don’t do anything stupid just because the helicopter is making you look really cool right now". I agreed, and glanced at the gauges. We were running hot, really hot… We had fixed all of these issues 100% in our prep. What was wrong, was I pushing harder than ever? At this point we were near race mile 20 in fresh air… Mission accomplished…Now we just had 62 miles to go!
At approximately RM35, the transmission lost all forward drive. I pulled off course, called our pits and told them we were stopped with an angry transmission. We checked the fluid, the Redline Full Synthetic had gone from red to clear and I found out why people say "I smoked the transmission", as soon as we pulled the dipstick, smoke poured out of the tube! Then I noticed the fans were not running. After playing with the switches and looking for a fuse, Berger grabbed the wires going to the fans and they came to life for a second. The ground lug had broken inside the connector just enough to make an intermittent open connection. Months of prep and a 2 cent connector had us on the side of the road getting passed.
We rewired the connectors and jumped back in the car and hauled ass back to fourth place. Now we had nothing to lose so we really pushed hard. It was amazing, we ran Aftershock clean except for a minor hang-up on a really easy part. We passed Mello, Kirby and Wayes but Randy was long gone. We tore through the next trail, Sunbonnet, and then into our pit where our crew was totally prepared and flawlessly executed our repairs. They made the trail fix wiring job more permanent, filled the gas tank and sent us into the next long trail, Outer Llimits. We still never saw Randy when after finishing Outer Limits, and we were on the gas 100%... Maybe even 110% at times. We pounded through the desert and headed to Resolution where we came across Clint again but this time he was out of his car, stuck, and clogging the trail… This time I paid him back for the high speed race and drove over his car, literally... Sorry Clint!
The course made a pass through the pit area and not needing fuel we motored on to the next trail, Big Johnson. Our experienced crew chief, Mike Shaffer, told us that Rick Moneyham was hot on our heels, and he was right because before we finished the trail I could see him in my mirrors. We picked up our pace in the rocks to a speed that was bound for failure. Sure enough, half way through the next trail, Wrecking Ball, we lost the steering. Fearing the worst and thinking to myself, "it’s just overheated from steering so fast", I let Easy Rick pass. I didn’t want to hold him up and since he started 86th, he was already ahead of us on adjusted time so there was no reason to slow him down. About a 1/4 mile down the trail, Rick blew a tire. He graciously pulled up a few more feet to let us pass, which we did slowly and made it just around the next corner before our steering was gone, just like our transmission 30 miles before. We hopped out and Jason Berger noticed the cap on the steering ram had worked itself loose. Improvising with a rock and the pin that holds our spare oil, he managed to do a pretty good job fixing the ram and a few quarts of fluid later, we were back on course. Our team was just down the road at the bottom of Wrecking Ball and they again, made our trail fix more permanent.
The irony of this whole race through the rocks with Easy Rick was that both of us had come 65 miles through the course faster than anyone, and both of us as it turns out had our steering rams fail within a 100 feet of each-other. The helicopter was swarming over us, what a story this will be on the movie!
We headed up Jack Hammer and through the next checkpoint to Sledgehammer. Sledge bit us bad. I couldn’t seem to get lined up and make the waterfall climb that I had walked in the Torchmate pre-runner the day before. I tried to grab a bit more of the right side of the climb and just then, I thought our race was over for the third time when it landed on the driver’s side door, we had rolled. Berger jumped out and grabbed the winch cable in an attempt to winch us over when "Pistol" Pete Sohren ran over to ask us if we wanted to be rolled over by the fans. I screamed "NO" we don’t want any outside assistance per the rules. He said that they could roll over cars, just not work on them. I called the race ops frequency and asked for myself and was told that they could in fact roll us back over. I didn’t realize the radio broadcast the signal out so loud since I had my helmet on, but just then a swarm of people rushed over and pushed us over! Since Berger was already out, he tied the winch cable around a rock and we winched up the waterfall. After all that downtime, we knew the guys we passed had to be right behind us!
I tried to keep a clear head but the race was on again, and we were flying at the limit. We ran through the rocks in high range entering The Fissure Mountain trail. I only blew one corner but most of them were perfect, and they had to be since the helicopter was right there. I might also mention that the cameraman’s shoelaces where still un-tied! We charged the rest of the trail and the few miles of desert knowing that unless Easy Rick had more problems, we probably didn't have enough to take the win and if it came down to just seconds, we'd look back at how we could have gone a bit faster in the last leg. So we left nothing on the table and just pushed harder than ever. About 1/8 mile before what we thought was the finish line, we noticed race director Dave Cole waving a checkered flag. They stopped the race just shy of the finish line so people didn’t race right into the fans that had gathered… Another smart move from these organized race promoters.
The next 13 minutes were miserable. They asked us to celebrate like we had won the race for the video cameras, but since the adjusted time wasn’t figured out, we couldn’t really go crazy… I felt like I was like jinxing the race! We waited and waited until they called out the times after what seemed like an an eternity. It was official, "Jason Scherer and Jason Berger are your 2009 King of the Hammer’s winners!" I saw Victor from BF Goodrich run up with the “winner” hats and Jason Berger said “you have no idea how long I’ve wanted one of these”. We did it, thanks to all my friends and family for letting me have this opportunity to make this happen. I truly appreciate your support! Also, a special thanks to Lance at Pirate4x4.com for allowing all of my friends and family to watch this race. I came home to a hero’s welcome!
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