Turbo Tom, Higman and Mischel #556 T4 - Charge to Tame Africa’s Sahara Desert
Nema, Africa (January 16, 2007) The Sahara Desert has little to offer humans and oftentimes rages on in its own manner, destroying the most prepared adventurers in the world. Creating a climate of its own within the thousands of miles covering the barren Earth’s crust, only the Nomadic tribes survive in the largest desert on the planet year round.
Nema is the small village that has become the temporary headquarters for the 29th DAKAR Rally. Due to potential violence against participants in this year’s organized adventure, ASO Officials changed the race course in Stage 10 to begin and end in Nema.
The world’s top off road racers took on the African plains in the early morning of January 16, 2007 and while all survived, not all were able to complete this relatively short, but difficult stage.
Coming on the heels of what is commonly referred to as the “Marathon Stage,” referring to Stages 8 and 9, today’s stage, Stage 10, was reported to be fairly moderate in difficulty. That proved incorrect for the American team from Southern California, affectionately named by a passionate group of followers, “Turbo’s MONSTER Crew.”
Although the problems for the #556 started back in Stage 6, when the American trio of Dakar racers struck an unknown significant object at speed, Turbo’s MONSTER T4, suffered a direct hit.
The trio of veteran SCORE racers patched their race truck together for Stage 7 and limped their way to the finish line, arriving, but only beating the cut off time by a handful of minutes.
Utilizing the so-called “rest day” to repair Turbo’s MONSTER T4, they worked late into the night with assistance from the MAN crew and off road suspension guru – John Marking, who happened to come upon them while perusing around Africa. Of course, Marking and Turbo are teammates and have raced in the BITD and SCORE series for years, so the coincidence might not have been so random as reported, but as Marking later commented, “I was bored and I had to do something.”
Will Higman, a mechanic racing in the #556 Monster Energy/HUMMER T-4, called in to DIRTnewz after finishing Stage 10 with this exclusive report.
“This has been an unbelievable adventure and an experience of a lifetime. I’ve spent more time with my teammates than I ever thought I’d spend with anyone other than my family. We are really in a groove. Operating on the least amount of sleep I’ve ever had in my life, we are physically in good condition and I don’t really feel tired. I’m either used to sleeping only a few hours a night or I’m simply numb to it, one or the other,” as he laughed. “But overall, we are all in excellent spirits and in great condition and the truck is holding together, barely.
Turbo has done a phenomenal job driving this truck. When Robby picked up the truck in Spain, it had not been prepped by our team. It was something that we just had to deal with and prepare to support Robby in the HUMMER H3,” explained Higman.
“Although we have struggled during the last few stages, as I mentioned previously, the truck had not been “properly” prepped when we picked it up in Europe and therefore we simply had to deal with it.
During Stage 8, the first of the marathon stages, the OLIN shocks on our truck blew out and slowed us down considerably. We were literally crawling as slow as a snail and hoping to make the cut off time for the stage, which fortunately, we did. We finished so late that it was nearly time to start Stage 9, therefore we had little time to effect repairs on the truck and we limped onward.
We did the best we could heading into Stage 9 without any support from our support trucks, as all race teams had no support between Stages 8 and 9. We had no parts to rebuild the OLIN shocks and fix the problem.
We crawled through Stage 9 and completed the stage with only minutes to spare and we had to ready for Stage 10, which was set to begin. We were told Stage 10 was fairly flat and so we departed the start line at a slow pace.
Only 20 kilometers from the start, we encountered some really rough terrain and we were slowed once again. We were afraid we would destroy the blown shocks, so we removed them and continued onward.
It took us 9 hours to travel 220 miles today.
When we arrived to the MONSTER/HUMMER pit tonight Robby was really pumped up about us finishing the race and overcoming some huge obstacles.
He’s allocated a set of spare 4” inch shocks that are for the race HUMMER to the MONSTER T4 truck and we’re preparing to fabricate mounts and get them on the big truck overnight.
The US representative to the ASO, Darren Skilton, visited us tonight and let the team know that if we finish the race in the #556, we’ll be the first ever American team to finish in the T4 class.
We are absolutely pumped up and we’re going to get this done. Turbo Tom has been doing a great job and we have some challenges in front of us, but we’re really feeling positive about our opportunities to get to the finish line and support Robby at the same time.
Pass the word to everyone following Team Dakar USA that we appreciate your thoughts. Sometimes we’re in the truck blasting along chatting about all the fans out there tracking us on the Internet and it keeps us entertained and motivated.
Good night from Turbo’s MONSTER T4 Crew.”
