Interview with John Brock, Owner of #777

Round 2 of W.E. Rock’s Dirt Riot Southwest takes place Saturday, April 5 at MC Motorsports Park.

“I know this track that we race on here in Tucson. I’ve taken first place before; hopefully we’ll do pretty well this weekend.”

Photo from Round 1, March 9, 2014 at Thompson’s Ranch, Congress, Arizona
John Brock driving, Mike Klensin co-driver; photo by Don Lawrence
Race1CongressAZ

THE PRESSURE IS ON

“I really like to have everything checked out well ahead of time and we’re not getting it done this time. Now we’re in the crush again.” He explained the situation as he drove out of town for parts.

“At the last race we had a transmission problem. The case was cracked and we replaced it with another transmission just last week; got it all finished up yesterday and it wouldn’t back up. Several times we’ve had this problem. Really disappointed, haven’t been able to figure it out; but I think we know what’s going on at this point.

So right now I’m driving up to Phoenix to get the parts we need. And I’m gonna get ’em put in this afternoon. One way or another, the transmission will be working this weekend. We did have to rebuild the drive shaft and replace a part on the transfer case after the last race. The engine is running fine, everything else seems fine.

Mike Klensin will be co-driver. We’ll be out there Friday morning to pre-run the course and then we race on Saturday around 1:00 or so. It’s a short track, probably going to be about 5 or 6 miles long, but we’ll run probably 3 hours. This is mostly desert race with a man-made rock crawling course. We’ll use part of that for the rock part of the race.

The biggest challenge is the track is narrow, with little place to pass anybody. And there’s a lot of cactus. Last time I rolled over into a cactus bush; fortunately, the only cactus that came close to getting me got stuck in my shoe.

NEW TO THE CREW

We’ve been a little bit short-handed, so we’ve got a new member to our pit crew, Daniel Stevens from Sierra Vista, AZ. Dan is brand new to this, we’ll make use of him any way we can. He’s been in four wheel drives for a while, but never been into the racing end of it. I think he’s excited to come.

HOPING FOR A GREAT TURNOUT

I’ve been working hard to get flyers and discount tickets out around town to get more people out there. The viewing at this track is spectator friendly; you can see the rock sections, start/finish line and they have food and drink vendors, bathroom facilities and grandstands.

Weather should be 70s and beautiful, hopefully not windy. What would be really nice is a gentle breeze to blow the dust off the track.”

Overall …

“I really want to do well at this race. It’s our home track.”

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Support John, Mike and the crew on Facebook at:
https://www.facebook.com/RockingJOffroadRaceTeam?ref=br_tf

Find directions and details for Round 2 of W.E. Rock’s Dirt Riot Southwest at:
http://www.werocklive.com/2014/dirt-riot-southwest-round-2-tucson-az/