“A regional event with a national flair”
Location: Blythe, Ca
Date: March 14/15, 2008
Lauchlin O’Sullivan wins both the Desert Storm events for 2008…..
This year Desert Storm had to change its road formats a bit due to glitches in government paperwork on certain roads on the Arizona side, but Riverside County came through for us and we had the entire event on the California side. We’d like to thank the Riverside County Public Works Department for making sure this event had roads.
We had a good mixture of competitors competing in several classes to earn points either for the Southwest RallyCup, California Rally Series or Rally America Regional Championships. The event had 5 coefficients over the course of two days. A last moment permit cancellation meant the loss of our Arizona roads and we went into “Plan b” mode and used all California roads. The competitors were very understanding and were ready to rally.
Tough competition was going on Day 1 between Lauchlin O’Sullivan/Scott Putnam with the Knight Transportation sponsored car (2006 X Games Rally competitors) and Michel Hoche-Mong (2007 2nd Place Group 2 National winner)/Sameer Parekh. Right behind them on their heels were Eddie Florelli/Brent Ellzey in Car# 726 and Kevin Welker/Nolan Sambrano and Chrissie Beavis (2007 X Games Rally Winner with Tanner Foust)/Terr-Dog Stonecipher. In the end Lauchlin O’Sullivan won Day 1 competition followed by Michel Hoch-Mong and third place went to Eddie Florelli.
In the evening, the City of Blythe was treated to having the competitors come out to Blythe Fire Department Annual Charity Spaghetti Dinner. The City Manager was very pleased with everyone coming to help raise funds for their annual 4th of July fireworks show. All of the volunteers and competitors and service crew really had a blast and really enjoyed talking to the local Blythe residents and having their rally cars on display to the public. The volunteer fire fighters are looking forward to doing this again with Desert Storm in 2009.
Day 2 of competition got heated up between Lauchlin and Michel but Chrissie Beavis was right on their tails bringing along Kevin Welker and Eddie Florelli and a strong novice team consisting of Aurimas Bakchis/Amy Arispe (who only did second day of competition) both days of competition saw Pete Morris staying very cautious with his set of tires since he wanted to make sure he did finish both days of competition and HE DID!
Day 2 ended up with Lauchlin/Scott winning and winning overall both days with Chrissie/Terr-Dog coming right behind them to take second and Kevin/Nolan taking third place.
Saturday night, Desert Storm teamed up with Lucas Oil, owners the 1-10 Speedway to show off the rally cars in front of their 1000 race fans on the grass field in the middle of the race track at their national point’s event. The competitors got interviewed and introduce the sport to a new set of rally fans!
We had several DNF’s both days from strong competitors but it was not in the cards for them…Jim Morris and his Chevy Camero, the Hudspeths and their Eagle Talon, Brian Svedin (thanks for coming all the way down to the event from PNW), George Doganis and of course Nick Taylor who just got back into competing after a long hiatus. They were troopers and great sportsmen/women for this sport. Desert Storm wishes them better luck at their next event.
In 2009, we will be introducing recce into the event and expanding to more stage roads on the California side of Blythe, California with the support of Lucas Oil. See ya next year!
