Monday, Jan. 17, 2005 | 8:39 a.m.
LAUGHLIN -- Dale Ebberts needed a little help going into the second and final day of the 11th annual SCORE Laughlin Desert Challenge off-road race.
Ebberts, who started the day in third place in Class 1, got all the assistance he would need during the final 44 miles Sunday and captured both the overall and class titles before a crowd estimated at 10,000.
Ebberts trailed first-day Class 1 leader Brian Ickler by nearly three minutes after Saturday's 44-mile segment and was 39 seconds behind second-place Pat Dean of Las Vegas. Both Ickler (tire) and Dean (mechanical) stumbled early in Sunday's four-lap race, clearing the way for Ebberts to capture his third class title and second overall championship in Laughlin.
"It was absolutely crazy out there -- the pace you have to run to be competitive here at this race is just insane," Ebberts said of the 2005 SCORE season opener. "It was really a smooth race ... we just didn't know if we were going to be able to pull it off; it was going to take Ickler having some trouble to make up that amount of ground and it worked out for us.
"I think we just stayed consistent with the leaders ... and it was just a matter of staying at their pace and not breaking the car. I think the two guys in front of us had trouble. There were some guys behind us and we only had seconds on them and they were, at times, leading, but I think some of them had trouble, too. We pushed real hard the last lap to make sure we had the time we needed to win."
Ebberts, of Canyon Lake, Calif., completed the two-day race in an elapsed time of 1:34:41 and averaged 55.765 mph. Gary Weyhrich of Troutdale, Ore., took second in Class 1 and his brother, Mike, was third.
Ebberts said the key to winning Laughlin is adjusting to the ever-changing conditions on the 11-mile course.
"Day to day, the course is different," Ebberts said. "You pre-run on Friday and it's a fairly smooth course and then it just gets dug in and dug in -- it's amazing the holes that get developed and the rocks that get pulled out.
"The first time you get out there Saturday, it's quite a bit different from Friday and then by the time you race on Sunday, it's almost like two different courses. Whatever your setup was on Saturday is not necessarily going to work on Sunday. You almost run the same setup every race all year but we actually change it day to day here."
It was the third Laughlin victory -- second in Class 1 -- in the past six years for Ebberts, who also was this race's overall champion in 2003.
"The Baja 1000 is my favorite (race), but Laughlin is the most intense, thrilling thing you could ever do," Ebberts said. "That's what makes it so thrilling -- it's so hard. You do everything you can to the car and you try to think about the course and try to do everything mentally you can to just concentrate and make sure you're prepared and make sure the car's prepared.
"It's so rough and so abusive and you just never let off the gas because you can't give up those seconds here."
While Ebberts had to rally to win his class, Dale Dondel of Hemet, Calif., added to his first-day lead and earned his first career SCORE Trophy Truck victory. Dondel finished second overall with a two-day elapsed time of 1:35:08 and averaged 55.501 mph in SCORE's featured division.
Dondel held a slim 19-second lead over Steve Sourapas after Saturday's four-lap segment but stretched that advantage to nearly two minutes midway through Sunday's race. Although Dondel finished 2 minutes, 40 seconds ahead of Sourapas, the race proved to be anything but a casual Sunday drive.
"We had brake problems just before we got a little bit of a lead and I said to myself, 'I just want to finish today,' so it was a great day," Dondel said. "I don't know what happened but there's oil everywhere all over my feet ... on the first lap, my feet were slipping on and off the pedals."
Las Vegas' Ed and Tim Herbst, who have teamed to win the Laughlin Desert Challenge three times in Trophy Truck, escaped injury in a serious rollover on the first lap Sunday that took the brothers out of contention for the class victory. The duo started the day in fourth place, 44 seconds behind Dondel.
Other class champions Sunday included Adam Pfankuch (Class 1-2/1600), Kash Vessels (Class 10) and Robert Naughton (SCORE Lite).
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