The excitement has already begun during the contingency and tech day here in Primm, NV for the 2007 running of the SCORE Primm 300. Motorsports madness has taken over the town. It is as if, for a weekend at least, we’re in a sort of desert racing utopia; a city whose residents consist of none but the most die hard members of the Off-Road Nation.
Earlier this year, Terrible Herbst acquired all three major casinos in Primm. Now Primm Valley, Whiskey Pete’s, and the host hotel for the race Buffalo Bills, all live under the Terrible’s red banner. Everywhere you look, the bright red “Terrible’s Motorsports” t-shirts are the uniform du jour. The dealers, waitresses, bartenders were rocking the red. Even the Starbucks girls were dressed for the occasion.

The big news of the day is that, for the first time, the tech inspection was held inside the arena at Buffalo Bills. The spectacular procession that is the seemingly endless line of race prepped vehicles slowly idling their way to be inspected were afforded an rare yet very welcomed bit of luxury in the air conditioned arena. The arena’s size and setup allowed for some of the contingency booths to be located inside as well. With temperatures in the low 100’s, competitors, exhibitors, and spectators alike were appreciative of the cool air blowing from the vents in the ceiling.

The first step outside is a tough one. The heat hits you like a brick wall, but by the time you’re done ogling the Trophy Trucks headed down the ramp to line up for tech, you’ve gotten used to it. At the top of the ramp is a relatively new sight to see at a SCORE contingency; the Xtrac trailer. Xtrac’s transmissions have long been regarded as one of the most advanced transmissions available for any type of motorsports on the asphalt. While they’ve been used extensively in sportscar road racing, drag racing, and rally their presence here in the Off-Road world is a new one. We’ll have to keep our eyes on the Class 1 Unlimited buggy driven by Martin Christensen and Armin Schwarz  this weekend as they put their new Xtrac through the harshest 300 mile test the Nevada desert has to offer.

There are a few new cars out for the weekend. The one that caught our eye the most was Scott Gailey’s new VW powered Class 10 buggy. The Canadae Pet Food / San Dimas Grain Co. effort is a beautiful machine. Simple details such as the car’s innovative hide-a-way spare tire located under the rear deck lid are just the icing on the completely custom designed and fabricated cake. Just to give you an idea of exactly how custom we are talking about, the amount of off the shelf parts used in the chassis build could be counted on one hand. Having been in desert racing since 1976, Gailey has finally realized a life long dream of building his very own vehicle with this cutting edge buggy. Unfortunately the car will not be seeing any race time this weekend. It’s inaugural run will be at the powder puff race in October driven by Gailey’s girlfriend Deanne Castle.

By the end of the day, it’s as if we had been here for a week. The Off-Road nation has truly taken this little town by storm. Not a piece of exposed flesh in the city is left untanned as the sun sings its sadistically satisfied swan song. The day’s activities wind down, and all minds turn toward tomorrow. The racers will be at the starting line at the crack of dawn; and so will we. So for live race updates, results, videos, photo-galleries and HotShots come back to the original source for SCORE desert racing on the web, Off-Road.com!