2006 | Silver State Classic Challenge (9/17/06)

Back To the One That Started It All

Finally after 15 years since it’s last SSCC, RJ and Co-Driver Kris Kaufman set their sights on Hwy 318 for Big Red’s first Road Race of the 21st Century. Now Bigger, Badder, Stronger and Faster-Big Red looked to raise the bar and put yet another record in the books.  The instant Big Red left the line though it was clear that something was wrong, for the first painful 20 miles of the course faltering fuel pumps struggled to feed the angry 598 as it blubbered and coughed, starving for fuel. After killing the engine and rebooting the entire system, the beast sprung to life. Big Red roared to 7000rpm and in an instant the onboard GPS was reading 200, 205, 215mph!!! Now that the car had come to life RJ drove perhaps harder than he ever had before knowing that to overcome such a tremendous setback from the first 20 miles would require near supersonic speeds. In the end, there was no way to defeat the clock and such an abysmal 1st sector performance. Big Red clocked an average speed of 163.932 due to the mechanical issues, which was still good enough for 1st place among 3 competitors in the Unlimited Class, but far off the mark she had set so many years earlier.