Last year, Brent Marshall and Craig Behiel were lucky to escape with their lives when they flipped their $250,000 pickup truck and destroyed it in a spectacular crash, 100 miles into the Best in the Desert Vegas to Reno off-road race.
They made up for their near-disaster two weekends ago when Marshall and Behiel finished second and fourth respectively in the 1800 trophy truck class. The epic high-speed journey over 550 miles of desert trails took 15 hours and 42 minutes for Marshall to complete and Behiel wasn't far behind, clocking in at 16:46. Dwayne Reinert of San Diego won the class in 15:08.
"I'm still hurting, it was crazy, it's the craziest thing I've ever done," said Marshall, who stopped only for fuel and to replace the fuel pump in the Northland Dodge-sponsored truck.
The extreme heat -- it was nearly 40 C during the day -- also fried the fuel pump in Behiel's truck. Behiel, who owns Vision Construction Management in Prince George, had Prince George dentist Lonny Legault riding shotgun as navigator. Behiel also had a flat tire to deal with.
Only 115 of the 175 vehicles entered in the car/truck classes finished the grueling event.
"We've been trying for three years to complete the race, it's the longest off-road race in North America," said Marshall. "You go over every kind of terrain, climbing rocks, climbing the steepest hills I've seen. It's pretty wild, I almost crashed repeatedly. You fly through the air, you go through silt beds where the silt is five feet deep and you can''t see a thing sometimes for 30 seconds or a minute while you're driving."
Marshall watched a dune buggy flip end-over-end in front of him but couldn't stop to help due to the low visibility around him and the danger of other vehicles colliding with him. All he and his navigator (Jim Hagner of Chatham, N.J.) could do was radio in the location of the crash.
"It's so easy to lose control because there are all these rolling hills and if you come off of one of the hills sideways the vehicle can [dig into the ground and roll]," said Marshall. "We did that last year and went end-for-end six or seven times at 75 miles an hour and totaled off a truck worth $75,000."
Marshall was left with injuries to his legs which required surgery. In 2012, Marshall and Behiel blew their engine 120 miles into the race.
The Northland Dodge trucks were sponsored locally by College Heights Pub, O'Brien Training, earls, ReMax Centre City Realty and Accent Dental. Most of the bigger-budget teams have several drivers, but Marshall and Behiel decided to complete the race themselves as ironman drivers.
"It's the most exhausting thing I've done," said Marshall. "You wear a kidney belt but you get so beat up in those trucks. I couldn't lift my arms by the time we done. Because of the rocks, Craig's truck blew off a tire rim and the brake calipers, so he had no front brakes for the last 100 miles."
Marshall was asked to race in the Baja 1,000 off-road race but declined the offer. The Vegas to Reno experience was tough enough on his body.
This was a bucket-list thing for me," he said.
Marshall plans to race his rear-engine dragster on the quarter-mile strip at Northland Dodge Motorsports Park on Sunday as the three-day Jet Set Bracket race weekend wraps up. Marshall's rail is capable of 7.8-second passes at 180 miles per hour. Some of the dragsters entered this weekend will be running in the low-six seconds at more than 200 mile per hour.
Racing starts today and Sunday at 10 a.m.
