And here we thought the Ultra4 mud race of the year was devoted to Pennsylvania’s Rausch Creek. Once a dust bowl in years past, this year the Badlands Off-Road Park of Attica, Indiana was transformed (with the help of a “little” rain) into one of the muddiest, wettest, and most aggressive Ultra4 races of the year.  Add two hours of lap style racing, and you end up with one of the most brutal races as well.

Let’s jump ahead to the finish, we’ll back track from there. You’ll see in the results below that Shannon Campbell took top honors from the weekend. Ah, but not so fast. As it happened, Shannon suffered an unfortunate leg injury at the last Ultra4 event (Glen Helen Grand Prix) and as such was unable to race. He’s currently sitting in 1st place for the series though, so missing an event would prove to be problematic. Good thing for kids.

It was Shannon’s son, Wayland Campbell, that took the wheel for this race. This is technically possible by having the driver of record start the race, in this case his father Shannon, and then some miles in switch out drivers. Smart move on dad’s part, Wayland had easily one of his best career races to date. So fast, in fact, that on more than one occasion the engineer/photographer/writer of this blog post had to jump out of Wayland’s way. Fast, very fast in fact, ending the 2 hour race one full lap ahead of the second runner-up. Congrats to Wayland and the entire Campbell Racing crew, huge victory and much to be proud of.

Now, let’s back it up just a bit. While Wayland was hauling the mail, the battle for first  was previously between the Spider 9 powered Ultra4 machines of Erik Miller and Derek West. Keep in mind the course was a lap based 6 mile long track, so it wasn’t incredibly common to see drivers racing neck in neck. Not the case with Erik and Derek, who were battling it out bumper to bumper lap after lap the entire 2 hours. When they both passed me on the final lap, just minutes before the checkered flag, all I could think of was which one would end up with top honors. As I made my way back to the start/finish, I saw in the distance a jogging Erik Miller. This can’t be good.

See, mud is a nasty thing. Not only is it, well, messy, the added weight and debris radically effects a vehicle’s performance and durability.  Mud had found its way into one of Erik’s idler pulleys, and as a result he lost his steering. Literally just minutes from wrapping up the race. As for Derek, mud made for an unhappy alternator and again, just minutes away from finish, he had an Ultra4 machine that wouldn’t fire up.

Both frantically pushed to get their rigs back on track, before the race would be called for time. With the help of an incredibly devoted race crew, they managed to get back to racing and finished 4th and 5th. Not where they had planned, but pulling off a top 5 after all of that was impressive nonetheless.

And so, that wraps up the Badlands UMC. We’re still cleaning off the mud from our gear, but I’m sure we have a few pictures to share this week from the Badlands UMC. Till then, have a great 4th of July (for all our American friends at least). We’ll be closed this Thursday and Friday for the holiday, need to enjoy some simple trail wheeling after last weekend’s crazy race. Till next time.