By Mitch Guthrie Jr.
Coming into the Best in the Desert BlueWater Desert Challenge Presented By Polaris I was very confident. The previous race, Vegas to Reno, went awesome and we came out of it with a 3rd in class, our first podium racing Best in the Desert. Our Polaris RZR XP4 Turbo car was dialed in and we were ready for Parker!
After finishing 5th overall at V2R that gave us a 3rd row side by side start. We shot off the line around 10 AM Saturday and got the hole-shot. The dust was terrible as there was no wind but we settled in with a good pace and focused on catching the cars in front of us. I had never raced on this course before so a huge part of the race was having my co-driver Kurtis keep us on course. The race was going awesome, the car was running great as we finished out lap one. With 2 laps to go we picked up the pace a bit and knew we were close to being 1st on time. The track had a lot of sand sections, which is very hard on the car, and we figured that out on lap 2. We unfortunately blew a belt, which we changed quickly and were back on course. We got back going with a good pace and just wanted to pick off as many cars as we could for a good starting position on Day 2.
Mitch Guthrie Jr. at the BlueWater Desert Challenge
We ended up 12th overall, which gave us a 6th row start for Day 2, which I wasn’t too happy with but we would make it work! We made a few setup changes on the car for Day 2, a quick prep, look over and we were ready to make up some ground on Day 2!
Mitch Guthrie Jr. at the BlueWater Desert Challenge
Sunday morning we were off the line and were able to get the hole-shot once again. Being a bit further back in the pack definitely didn’t help and we were caught in some pretty bad dust. Not to mention the track was very torn up after the trophy trucks raced on Saturday. The car was fast and we tried to keep it together, there was a lot of carnage and cars succumbing to the brutal track on Day 2. We did the same thing as day 1 and just tried to settle in and pass as many people in front of us as possible. And we did just that, we ended up gaining a lot of time on the leaders and passed a good amount of cars. Overall we had a very smooth day with zero problems and ended up salvaging a 5th in class which I was happy with after a tough first day.
