Drivers on US-281 between Great Bend and Hoisington Friday morning may have noticed a bright yellow race car parked just outside the gates of Nobody’s Auto Salvage. The yard was the final checkpoint for the second leg of Rocky Mountain Race Week 2020. Chad Ehrlich, Great Bend, is a long time follower and sometimes racer in RMRW, and a friend of organizer Matt Frost. Frost asked him to plan the route from Kearney, Neb. to Great Bend, and Nobody’s would be the last stop before the SRCA Dragstrip. 

All participants in RMRW race street cars, and to qualify for each race, they must drive their vehicle along a specified route from race to race. Details of the route remained secret until Thursday night after they turned in their time slips. 

“That way everybody has to drive the same route,” Ehrlich said. “If everybody knew what the route was, knew what the checkpoints were, somebody could drive to all the checkpoints two weeks ago, take a picture of their car, and then take the most direct route the next day, and avoid a bunch of miles.”

Every race has to have its rules, after all. But Ehrlich has known many of the racers for many years. He and his daughter participated in the entire race in 2018, and built some solid relationships. 

“This group of people is one of the best groups of people on earth you’ll ever run across,” he said. “The biggest problem you have if you break down on the road is too many people trying to help you.”

Racing at the SRCA Dragstrip begins Friday afternoon. Racers like Jamie Langford and Willie Updike from Colorado, first time RMRW racers, will have a short break before checking in at the Pueblo, Colo. race track for Sunday’s race. Their 2005 Dodge Neon SRT-4 has experienced converter and transmission troubles a few times since they turned in their first time slip at Bandimere Speedway in Morrison, Colo. That’s where the race starts and ends. 

After Bandimere, they began the Kearney leg of the tour. Luckily, the schedule included a drive day. The transmission overheated 20 miles outside of Morrison, and they had to make repairs on the road. 

 “Then we sprung and oil leak and we had to fix that,” Langford said. “We went a long way until we made it to Sterling (Colo.) and it got a misfire, and we had to work on it for a couple of hours.”

After they got it fixed, they made it to Kearney. Yesterday, they made one “okay” pass, and got a hole in the transmission. They quickly found the problem. A piece had come loose. They patched everything together with a welding compound, and made it to the Great Bend checkpoint. 

“This is actually the best drive we’ve had so far,” Langford said. 

The team is well stocked for roadside repairs, it turns out. The rear seat and trunk are packed with parts and tools. Early on, they planned to bring along a small trailer, but determined it would be too rough on the car, so they abandoned it back in Morrison with Langford’s wife. 

“We just came without many spare parts, but it’s been enough to keep going.”  

Langford has owned the car for 13 years, so he’s figured out the weak points and knows what’s likely to break. He’s chased RMRW in years past, but this is his first year racing. His goal this year is to make at least one pass at each race site in order to qualify to keep going. He’s not looking forward to the final leg of the race, when drivers will navigate their cars through the mountains between Pueblo and Morrison. He plans to drive at night to keep the car from overheating.   

Not every driver has as tough a time on the road as Langford and Updike have. Jim Parkison is the owner of Tuned By JP, and he tunes race cars for a living. After paying entry fees for the race for three years running, this is the first time he’s actually been able to get away and do it, he said. 

“The first year my car just absolutely wasn’t ready. It was a pipe dream,” he said. “The second year, I could have come but I really didn’t schedule very well for it. This year, it’s been on the calendar basically for four or five months and I just absolutely refuse to schedule anybody around this time.”

The first leg of the tour, he said, was a gruelling 18-hour trip from Morrison to Kearney. This leg, he said, was much better and they made better time. They left around 5:30 a.m., made a few stops along the way, and rolled into Nobody’s a little after 11 a.m. 

So far, Parkison is pleased with his car’s performance. This despite not being able to use a better engine he’d built with the race in mind. 

“We put that motor in one week before the event, drove around three days, and put it on the dyno,” he said. “We had a little problem with it and I was out of time to try to fix or figure out what’s wrong with that engine.” 

Instead, they pulled it out, replacing it with a tried and true motor he built four years ago. He had hoped to run in the 850 index with the better engine, but his time was 9:21 at Bandimere, at 147 miles per hour. 

“We’re going to regroup next year, and we’re going to run 850’s,” he said. “We’re having a great time. The car ran 9:13 at 151 mph last night in Kearney. Not bad for a street car.” 

Throughout the noon hour, racers continued to pull into Nobody’s, took photos of their car at the checkpoint to post to the race officials, and stopped to pick up a hotdog, chips, some water, and to trade updates with the other racers. Some made spot adjustments, or strategized over repairs. 

While car owners tweak their vehicles for speed, they all have to remain completely street legal. So, the route is intentionally going to be hard on the vehicles, but they have to be able to go down any normal road or highway, with lights, wipers, horns, etc. It’s all part of the tech they go through at safety inspections before the race. While Ehrlich didn’t include any dirt roads, he did work in some zigzags to make the trip interesting. He had drivers stop at Lebanon, the geographic center of the United States, for the first checkpoint. 

Races were set to start at the SRCA Dragstrip at 4 p.m. Friday. Drivers can make as many passes as they want to achieve their optimum time before turning in their slips and finding out which route would take them to Pueblo for the fourth day of racing on Sunday. The final race, a return to Bandimere Speedway, will wrap up the 2020 on Monday, June 29.