Owning and operating a race team is the hardest job you’ll ever love (besides raising kids, that is). It’s 9:15pm and Brad and I have just completed what we term a “turn around” at our house. That is that the race trailer has been unloaded, cleaned and prepped for the next race. Roger is at home doing the same thing with the team’s smaller 20’ trailer this week.

Last weekend our team competed in rounds seven and eight of the Extreme Off-Road Racing (XORRA) Series in Cortez, Colorado. Round seven of XORRA placed Roger running against Levi Shirley of Lucky Dog Racing; and Brad racing side-by-side with Monster’s Shannon Campbell. With the platform changed this year to accommodate side-by-side racing, the thrill of bumping, grinding and flat out punting your opponent, is always a possibility and certainly marked what our team experienced on Saturday. Roger prevailed in this new environment as his aggressive, yet constrained driving placed him in the final shoot-out in 6th position. The benefit of going into the finals in 6th position is that you have nothing to lose; and indeed Roger drove like he had nothing to lose and in turn gained a spot finishing round seven in 5th position.

Round eight of XORRA was marked less with competitor battles and more with obstacle dilemmas. Race one ended with a tire change, race two brought Roger hurtling down a drop in a “hand stand” fashion for what seemed like forever, race three was plagued by steering issues, and race four resulted in a penalty for Brad. When the dust settled, Roger was in the shoot-out, Brad was trailing behind a few positions. Roger showed his driving skills on Saturday with the most fluid run of the weekend, and was rewarded with a 6th place finish and a 9th place series placement.

Now that the XORRA season is finished the team is dividing and conquering as Brad is off to rounds 7 & 8 of the Traxxas TORC Series presented by AMSOIL in Bark River, MI and Roger is off to the Ultra 4 Series stop at Land’s End Hill Climb in Grand Junction, CO this coming weekend August 14-15. Brad will remain on the road finishing out the TORC Series with events in Chicagoland, Ill on August 25-26 and in Crandon, WI on Labor Day weekend. The duo will come back together to finish out the majority of the 2010 race season when they compete in the Reno Stampede in mid September.