Vorra Adds Ultra4
The Valley Off Road Racing Association (VORRA) has added an Ultra4 class to its off-road races this year. The season's class winner will earn a starting spot at the 2011 King of the Hammers. VORRA is a seven-round series that includes four short-course races at the Prairie City OHV Area in Folsom, California, and three desert races in northern Nevada. Three Ultra4 cars competed in last year's series, and Kevin Yoder (seen here) took the 2009 Sportsman Class win. For more info, log on to www.vorra.net.
Earth Watch
•Our friends at the National Off Road Association (NORA) report that due to the leak of an internal White House document showing plans to designate 13 million acres as national monuments and wilderness without public input, President Obama announced his America Great Outdoor Initiative in March to encourage local involvement in the crafting of this new plan. NORA calls this "more Washington double talk," since locking the majority of the public out of their public lands via wilderness and monument designation will discourage the most popular forms of outdoor recreation. "This will clearly discourage the public from enjoying the backcountry," says NORA. "There is just no way reducing access can be preserving access." President Obama held a last-minute conference in April to encourage local partnerships, but after polling more than 60 local organizations, NORA could not find one that had been invited. Those that were invited support closure of public lands, such as the Sierra Club and the Wilderness Society.
•Yamaha employees recently joined members of the U.S. Forest Service and the San Bernardino National Forest Association by volunteering more than 500 hours to improve OHV trails and staging areas and plant 2,250 trees in the San Bernardino National Forest.
Shannon Peed, racing in the Pro Mod class, was one of just four female competitors at the
W.E. Rock Blows In Arizona
Actually, high winds blew during the second round of the World Extreme Rock Crawling Championship Series (W.E. Rock) in Tucson, scattering tents in Vendor Row and messing with the concentration of some of the drivers.
Unlimited Class winner Brent Bradshaw.
Brent Bradshaw earned his first Unlimited Class win after early leader Tracy Jordan dropped out with a mechanical failure. Jesse Haines looked like a lock to win in Pro Mod after leading at the end of day one, but he timed out on one of the big hillclimbs during Day 2, opening the door for Brad and Roger Lovell to claim class victory.
From Ua To Bitd
Remember Kevin Stearns from Ultimate Adventure 2009? Once the UA was done, he rebuilt his Blazer and went desert racing. First stop was King of the Hammers, where he unfortunately did not finish. Stearns pressed on, though, and joined the Best in the Desert series. He raced the Silver State 300 in the Ultra4 class and finished a respectable eighth in class, despite losing time to a rollover and his self-recovery. Having Yukon Gear, Bilstein, and Goodyear as sponsors helped the team, says Stearns, who now has his sights set on the Vegas-to-Reno race.
More Trouble for Toyota
At about the same time Toyota announced it had repaired some 3 million recalled vehicles for sticky pedals and pedal-entraping floor mats, the NHTSA opened yet another safety-related investigation, this time concerning steering linkage in '89-'95 4Runners and '93-'98 T100 pickups. Toyota issued a recall notice to fix the steering in 2005, but according to the Los Angeles Times, allegations in lawsuits filed in 2009 show that the company received complaints about the steering as far back as 2000. Federal law requires an automaker to notify the NHTSA and conduct a recall to fix a problem within five days of learning about the problem.
After the news broke, Toyota said it has "received and is reviewing the information request from NHTSA and will cooperate with the agency's investigation."
Build A Corbeau Baja Seat
Corbeau, longtime maker of specialty seats for the off-road, street, and racing markets, is looking to enthusiast off-roaders for help in designing its newest Baja RS seats. From a technological standpoint, Corbeau is proud of its engineering; the suspension in its current Baja RS seats reduces the amount of g-forces transmitted to your body, alleviating much of the shock on your spine that comes from aggressive driving. Yet the seat maker recognizes that, for all the good tech in the seat, its overall aesthetic is lacking. So Corbeau wants some help in designing a better-looking Baja RS seat. You don't have to be an ergonomics expert to submit an idea. Corbeau will accept anything from a sketch on paper to a 3-D CAD drawing. If your design is chosen as the next look for the Baja RS seat, you'll win that all-new seat, plus brackets and harness belts. You can submit your designs to www.corbeau.com/bestrs. Direct any questions to bestrs@corbeau.com.