The folks at Championship Off-Road Racing are tickled pink about how their 2007 racing season has gone as of mid-summer. Ticket sales have tripled over last year's season; the series is attracting all kinds of top-tier racers, including NASCAR driver Robby Gordon and seven-time AMA Champion Jeremy McGrath; and a new television package adds coverage by NBC Sports to programming on Speed and Cox4SD.
"Seeing the growth and success of CORR this season has been encouraging and thrilling," said Cissy Baldwin, CORR's chief operating officer. "Our fan base continues to grow every day, and sponsors are jumping on board with enthusiasm for CORR."
Back in our Aug. '07 issue, we told you about two Wrangler Rubicon Unlimiteds that set an altitude record by driving nearly 22,000 feet to the rim of the Ojos del Salado volcano in Chile. Well, the ink on that issue had barely dried before we heard from our pal Lisa Wood at ARB about another record attempt on the same Chilean volcano. This time, driver Gonzalo Bravo and his spotter, Eduardo Canales, drove a modified Suzuki Samurai to an altitude of 21,942 feet, passing the German Jeep team's mark of 21,804 feet. (The record is currently unofficial, pending corroboration by the Guinness Book people.) The '86 Zuki was fitted with ARB lockers and compressor, stronger axles, lower gears, and a supercharger on the engine.
"Besides the amazing height and lack of oxygen, the most difficult thing was the variety of terrain that we had to drive through on the volcano: steep climbs, huge rocks, snow, glaciers, and deep sand, sometimes at the same time," Bravo said. "The most difficult section was to cross a half a mile on the main glacier at 21,000 feet, basically because the huge holes in the ice were covered by fresh snow that fell that Monday and made it impossible to know how the terrain really was underneath. This forced me into non-mistake driving, because we could not stop our run under any circumstance, because we were absolutely alone up there."
Rod Hall and his son, Chad, won the 2007 Baja 500's Stock Mini class in their Hummer H3 this summer. This marks not only the second consecutive 500 victory for the Halls and the H3, it's also the second time in as many years that the Hummer was the only Stock Mini entry to finish the grueling Mexican race. With this win, Hall is tied with Ivan "the Ironman" Stewart for the most class wins-17-in the history of this race.
Well, we wish. But Hummer dealers are trying to ease the pain for some ill children by donating battery-operated, kid-size Hummers to the pediatric units of a number of hospitals across the country. The program, called Courageous Kids, is intended to help reduce the anxiety that children often experience when undergoing medical treatment. Young patients can drive themselves to surgery or other medical procedures in the little Hummers, rather than ride a boring-or worse, intimidating-gurney. "Local surgeons have told us that some kids even require less anesthesia when they ride into surgery in the Hummers," said David Burroughs, a GM environmental engineer at the Shreveport, Louisiana, GM plant, who came up with the idea. "It's a rather remarkable phenomenon." To date, Hummer dealers in Michigan, Louisiana, Wisconsin, Washington, and Texas have donated half-pint Hummers to local hospitals, and Hummer officials expect the numbers to grow.