Huntington Beach, CA – After the Mint 400, the BITD 6100 class is in a hard fought battle with a 4 way tie for 2nd place in points. Coming into the Silver State 300, race teams are looking to make the charge and pull away. The Camburg team is one of those teams looking to pull ahead from the tie.
The 6100 class for this race also had to qualify to determine starting positions. This was done on a short 2.2 mile course down in Jean, Nevada. In preparation for the upcoming Baja 500, the team put driver Alex Figge in the truck for the added seat time. Alex was able to quality 5th out of 15 trucks which the team was happy with.
The team caravanned out to the starting line 100+ miles Northwest of Las Vegas, just outside of Alamo, NV at 5am Saturday morning. This course is unique in that it loops around the mountains, goes through deep silt sections, zig-zags through high elevation pine forests and goes through a few old boom towns. It makes for a very scenic and tight race in terrain not considered the norm for desert racing.
Alex Figge piloting #6175 with Russell Hampton co-driving were off the line around 10 am. Alex set a pace that was with the leaders. The first 70 miles of this course is tight and hard to make passes on. Around race mile 20 in the twisty and dusty conditions Alex had motion sickness set in. Backing off the pace a bit to try and re-group he fell down a few positions. Unfortunately the motion sickness got worse and really began to hinder his driving. He pulled into pit 2 at race mile 73 for a pause and some water. Back under way he got even worse to the point where he couldn’t continue to drive the truck. Pulling off the track, Russell swapped with Alex and moved into the driver’s seat. Soon after, Russell pulled into pit 3 at race mile 103 where Alex got out of the truck. His day was over and he ended up going directly to the Caliente medical center for an IV of fluids for dehydration.
With no one banded at Pit 3, Russell made a solo mission to pit 4 at race mile 151 where Camburg had their scheduled fuel stop. This is where Russell’s brother Justin got into the co-driver’s seat and they focused on the finish. They were able to make up some time and positions on the class and charged to the finish line with zero issues.
The Camburg 6175 Spec TT crossed the finish line 303 miles later in 6 hrs 22 mins in 6th place out of 18 6100 trucks and finished 41st overall out of 125 total entries. With the down time, they were only 23 minutes behind the winner.
Now at the half-way point in the series the Camburg team is tied for 2nd in points with one other team and looking to better their results at the upcoming Vegas to Reno race in August. Before then, they will be racing the SCORE Baja 500 down in Baja, Mexico on June 6th in the TT Spec class.
Camburg would like to thank all their sponsors, team members and fellow racers for the opportunity to be racing in this class and series. Best in the Desert puts on the highest quality and well organized events out there today.
“This is not what I expected going into this race. Sadly I had to get out, but I knew Russell was up for the challenge and did a great job taking it to the checkered flag. I’m looking forward to my first race down in Mexico at the 500.”
– Alex Figge
“Russell is a great co-driver and having him and his brother Justin take our truck to the finish with no issues was great to see and an even better experience for the both of them. Both are an integral part of the prep of this truck and building our KINIETIK line of race trucks.”
– Jerry Zaiden
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