Hardbody's Are Tough...But Not That Tough....

My goodness...this driver is lucky to be alive.

The Hardbody involved has a small lift but the pilot must be brainless.  Heading out on a small jetty into what looks like 15-20 foot waves is moronic.  The waves, broken by the rocks jetty are still plenty strong enough to toss the truck around like a toy.  The Coast Guard comes in at the end to rescue the driver and the world appears to be less one more Hardbody...RIP...

Guo Meiling Not Wholly Responsible for Dakar Accident...

I'd like to place all the blame for the crash on the friggin prologue stage of the '16 Dakar solely on Guo Meiling but I can't.

Guo made it a whopping four miles into the two week long race before she wadded up her X-Raid Mini.  Various reports reflect different numbers of injured but most place it around ten individuals with four being serious.

Holding primary responsibility is Guo herself.  On a picture perfect weather day and a brief prologue of only about 7 miles in which no one should have been running at full race speeds (the usual, you can't win the race here but you sure as hell can lose it here cliche comes to mind) Guo has no excuses for careening out of control.  She simply lacked the skill, brains, experience or all three to be playing at the pointy end of the field.

She is not a professional racer as the rest of the X-Raid Mini team is.  Look at the other names on the team--Al-Attiyah, Roma, Hirvonen, Van Loon, Hunt, Garafulic, Malysz, etc.  They are ALL world class racers behind the wheel of a world class vehicle capable of running speeds virtually unimaginable to mere mortals.  Meiling??  She's a "businesswoman", a vice chairman of a Chinese healthcare company who dabbles in offroad racing in her spare time.  Her claim to fame to date?  1st place in the Taklimakan rally...on an ATV....in the women's class...five years ago.  She has no results to speak of outside of China and has no place behind the wheel of an X-Raid Mini...except for one thing...money.  I take a look at the photo of Guo crying behind the wheel seemingly uninjured (at least not seriously) while helicopters, ambulances and medical staff swirl around assisting the injured and I see someone completely out of her end of the pool.

Which I'm sure is what she and her company paid X-Raid in spades for this seat.  Maybe X-Raid was blinded by the ash and the fact that there was an experienced codriver beside her.  But Sven Quandt's team doesn't need the money really does it?  So was it the shiny ribbon of putting the first female Chinese competitor behind the wheel of a Mini that sold it?  I dunno...but Sven shares the blame here as well.  Testing for Meiling behind the wheel of the Mini (which can be seen in numerous videos to have a squirrely temperment with a rear end that tends to buck violently in the bumps) was likely minimal to non-existent and evidently never under full race conditions.  Video of the crash shows exactly what you would expect--a small bump raising the rearend of the vehicle followed by a massive overcorrection by the driver, through a fence and into the crowd.  The road was completely flat, no rocks, no trees, no turns, nothing....just a complete clusterfuck by a driver who had no idea what she was doing.

Maybe such instances of "gentleman" drivers have happened in the past at the Dakar...it likely has...I'm just not cognizant enough about the Dakar's history to point out another one.  This one however just stinks of the same problem that another dangerous sport has seen in recent years.

Climbing Everest and other world class peaks in the past 20 years or so has largely become a bucket list item for the rich.  We all remember the Into Thin Air disaster on Everest and there have been a number of other, similar and larger disasters resulting in numerous deaths in recent years.  Many times these involve problems caused by the "client" climbers.  Climbers who have a minimal amount of big mountain experience ponying up large sums of money in order to latch on to those who are more capable and experienced in hopes of bagging that peak which will give them bragging rights back home.  Sound familiar?  Its the same disease--paying clients who want a shortcut to the top and experts only too willing to take the cash in exchange for equipment or support.

No one will ask Sven about the money that changed hands or the vast gulf of experience and talent between his other drivers and Meiling.  Meiling will likely never return to the Dakar and will likely be lost to history.  If no one ends up passing on from her and X-Raid's misadventure in the 2016 Dakar it will be a lucky thing.  Here's a toast to needing less luck in avoiding fatalities at the Dakar in the future...

Aussies At the Parker 425

A number of Aussies came over for Best in the Desert's Parker 425 this past weekend.  What makes Parker and the Aussies so interesting for me?  Well, its the inclusion of a number of Nissan powered buggies.  In Australia, due to rules allowing for turbo motors, Nissan motivated vehicles are a dime a dozen.

In the states however where turbos have been excluded from most desert racing classes the humble VW engine has been standard for smaller buggies and carbureted Chevy and Ford engines have been dominant for years.  In this year's Parker 425 however, BITD has loosened their rules a tad and are now beginning to allow turbos (and multiple turbos) in their top level classes.  One such class is the Unlimited buggy class, called "Class 1" or "1500 class" vehicles in BITD.

So there were three Aussie class 1500 buggies and actually one Aussie Trick Truck as well.  All three buggies were Nissan powered by a VQ35 engine.

The #1528 of Matt Hanson was a twin turbo Jimco that had been shipped over from Australia.

The #1507 Alumicraft of Garry Simpson had originally had a Honda powerplant but was swapped for the Nissan once it reached Australian stores.  Its VQ35 is naturally aspirated and is mated to a six speed Fortin sequential transmission.

The #1573 is  a brand new Raceco that Matthew Martin took delivery of just a few days before Parker and is also naturally aspirated.

The #47 Jimco trick truck was also just completed and delivered to its Aussie customer Steve Sanderson and is motivated by a Kroyer racing engines Chevrolet.

The results for the Aussies were excellent.  Two of the three buggies finished the race as well as the Trick Truck.  The only DNF was not caused by a mechanical failure or driver error but was due to a ruptured fuel cell from an impact by one Mr. BJ Baldwin and his Trick Truck.  Results were as follows:

#1528--finished 23rd overall and 5th in class out of 95 official finishers and 24 finishers in class
#1507--finished 21st overall and 3rd in class
#47--finished 27th overall and 17th in class

The drivers of these vehicles were blown away by the roughness of the course calling their premier event--the Finke Desert Race in Australia--a highway compared to the terrain in Arizona they encountered.  The most impressive finish of these drivers was the #1507 of Garry Simpson who was running his little 3.5L NA V6 engine against the 7 Liter V8s of the rest of the Class 1500 field.  Overall the Aussies showed that even in limited seat time on unseen terrain behind unproven vehicles, they can compete at the pointy end of North American desert racing.

Film Review: The Ides of March

This one sat on my shelf for a while.  Any film where unabashed liberal George Clooney plays a character acknowledged to be based on Howard Dean in part, reasonably is viewed with scepticism.

I shouldn't have let it wait so long.  There is no real liberal agenda here.  In fact, it makes nearly all the liberals in their film, which all the characters are, distinctly unlikeable.  They are all backstabbing, cheating, lying, conniving, philandering scum.  You don't get a much more accurate depiction of American politics than that.

I also credit the film with depicting the pregnancy of an intern by the Clooney's married Governor and her resulting abortion with a decidedly ugly touch.  There is no discussion here of the life within the girl, the pregnancy is merely a political obstacle which must be overcome.  The handling of the abortion carries all the weight of taking care of a cavity--a shockingly honest depiction of the left's view of undesired pregnancies.

Clooney is excellent both in his supporting role as the governor/presidential candidate and the director of this film.  It is engrossing and brisk, coming in at one hundred and forty one minutes with few wasted frames.  There isn't much fluff here and the film is better for it.

Ryan Gosling fills the role of Stephen Meyers, a junior campaign manager for Clooney's Mike Morris is the focus of the film as he is used by both his senior manager (Phillip Seymour Hoffman) and the opposing campaign manager (Paul Giamatti) to their own benefit as well as by Mike Morris and the pregnant Molly Stearns (Evan Rachel Wood).  Gosling's character is skilled but naive and inexperienced in the underhanded dealings of politics.  This film is among the works that have driven Gosling to the top of the most wanted list for actors in the past year.  Between this film and Driver (reviewed earlier on this website) Gosling has put a couple strong entries on his resume.

The film ends with Stephen Meyers looking into the camera and about to go live with his own remarks on...something.  Is he just going to go along with Morris's cheating and abuse merely in the belief that his election "may" bring about the policies he so desires?  Is he really that cynical now?  Or is he going to torpedo the whole campaign by revealing the governor's indiscretions?  We never find out.  But the fact that I couldn't decide which direction the character would go left me feeling I had watched a properly complex and well done film