MY RACE: W.E. ROCK, DONNER, CA

To say that our Johnson Motorsports team was very happy to be coming to the Donner, California, round of the World Extreme Rockcrawling Championship Series (W.E. Rock) this past weekend would be an understatement.

Coming into Donner, we were sitting tied for fifth in the W.E. Rock Series points standings, and my goal for the year has been to qualify for the W.E. Rock Grand Nationals, which are held in Missouri in September. You have to finish in the top nine in the series to qualify for the Grand Nationals, and I didn’t want to have to get in as a wildcard. Obviously, we knew that we couldn’t win the series in Donner, so our goal there was just to do the best we could and not lose any spots.

I enjoy each event we attend because it really gives me the opportunity to practice as well as to compete. The courses that W.E. Rock’s Lil’ Rich Klein sets up don’t typically contain the type of terrain that you would find out on a trail. When you’re out on the trail, you don’t say to yourself “I’m just going to go drive off this 14-foot cliff just for fun!” You kind of want to do it only when it counts because you can do so much damage to your truck. I like the competition, but it is also additional practice for me, really. I learn from each one.

The crowd at Donner was the biggest crowd I have ever seen. Let me tell you there are a lot of hard-core wheelers in Northern California! It started raining on Sunday, and the crowd stuck around through the rain all the way to the end of the day, and they were pumped up and crazy. We really love the crowds in Donner, and the atmosphere is gorgeous. You are in the pine trees, and the courses overlook the lake. It is like being on a vacation. For scenery, it is one of my favorite places.

We had a really good day on Saturday until the last course of the day, when I decided to crack my oil pan on a rock. We were probably doing pretty well up until then, but to tell you the truth, I wasn’t keeping track of other people’s scores. I just know that I was in contention until I broke.

That course was one that only about three or four teams even made, and we were one of the last ones to drive it. I was following Brad and Roger Lovell, and they had just given it everything they had to try to launch up and get through the course. I could see their line, and I could see how you basically had to jump your truck to get up and over the rocks that were in the way. Every time I went for it, it would just push me back into the wrong position. I backed it up to try it again, and my husband, Frank, was packing rocks, and I had my arms waving to get the crowd going, and everybody was cheering, and then I went for it.

Well, it looked great, anyway. I launched it, and it just came down on a really pointy rock and cracked the oil pan. I gave it everything I had, and it just wasn’t enough. So we drove into Truckee on Saturday night and got everything welded up and fixed.

I’d had the really good fortune to follow the Lovells around the courses on Saturday, and for Sunday I would be following Shannon Campbell. Everything looked like it was going to go really well until I got greedy and chose not to take a reverse while coming off a drop. I wasn’t lined up square to the wall, and I should have backed up to line it up better, but instead I went for it and ended up rolling over and landing completely upside down.

Now, this was disappointing for a couple of reasons. One is that I’m usually very conservative. This was just a disagreement that Frank and I had. He told me that I had it, and I said “I need to take a reverse.” Then he said “No, you’ve got it!” We just didn’t communicate properly, and as soon as I rolled – I think I was in mid roll when I yelled out the window “I should have reversed!” The other is that I get really ticked off if I get body damage. I’m okay with breaking parts, but I repair the fiberglass myself, so when I damage it, that makes me pretty mad! And I trashed it.

What it all boils down to is that I am at the controls, so the decision is mine, but at the same time I have to place my trust in my spotter. I can’t second-guess him when he tells me that I have it, because if I do then I am not trusting him like I should. That course ultimately cost us our chance at being in the shootout because I had great scores on all my other courses for the rest of that day. In essence, Sunday was actually an improvement over Saturday, and we did hold on to our fifth place in the series.

So we are locked in, and we accomplished our goal of qualifying for the Grand Nationals in Missouri in about six weeks. At the beginning of the season, if you had told me that we were going to take a top-five, I would have thought “Wow, that’s a lot to bite off,” but I’m okay with it now. We did great, and we are really happy, and I really have to thank Pro Comp Tires, Premier Racing Products, ARB, Turnkey Engine Supply, Fi Car Audio, Koplin Construction, Winchline.com, DAMZL and all of our other sponsors. We wouldn’t have been able to do this without all of them.   

So now we have a lot of prep work to do for the Grand Nationals. We have a ton of fiberglass work to do on the body, and we’ll do our normal race prep on the rest of the truck, go through everything and check every bolt. There won’t be anything special or different with regard to our prep, but I think that the mindset will be different. For one, we aren’t all that excited to have to do a 24-hour, one-way drive for a weekend of wheeling!

But overall, I am excited. I’m still trying to get into the mindset that I can win one of these events. I really have to start thinking more like Troy Bailey and Brad Lovell, who tell me “Nicole, don’t think top 10. Don’t think top six. Think number one. You can do this.” I’m trying to think like that, but at the same time I am trying to set realistic goals like making the Grand Nationals. All these guys are beatable, but I’m not sure that I believe that just yet, so if I could finish in the top three at the Grand Nationals I’m not sure what I would do. What would you do if you won the lottery? You don’t really think that you’re going to win the lottery, do you?

But we’re still going to play and hope for a little luck!

Nicole Johnson can be reached at johnson4x4.com. Look for a feature interview with Nicole in the September issue of Dirt Sports magazine, which goes on sale August 13. Subscribe online today!