Spidertrax | Thom Kingston | CC BY 3.0

One of our favorite sections at last years American Rocksports Challenge (ARSC) was the massive tabletop set across the Utah mountains. We managed to get this shot of Levi Shirley, effortlessly taking the tabletop and setting up a perfect line for turn 3. Levi grabbed himself a 6th place finish at ARSC, just one place ahead of his dad Brian. Guess who’s going to be featured in today’s afternoon blog post? :)

Spidertrax | Thom Kingston | CC BY 3.0

In typical fashion Loren Healy, with this Spider 9 powered Ultra4, ran his own race, pacing himself out of the gate and staying mostly under the radar till the end. The result, an insanely clean run with a 3rd place finish for the American Rocksports. Unofficially, this should get Loren a 2nd place finish in the Ultra4 Pro Series. Congrats Loren for a very well run series!

Spidertrax | Thom Kingston | CC BY 3.0

So, with dust still heavily lodged in the eyes, we made a bit of a mistake yesterday with the lead in photo. You can read the post HERE, but in summary we went on and on about Erik Miller battling it out with Shannon Campbell, feeding on the whole solid axle vs. IFS debate, and then went ahead and posted a photo of Greg Lundeen. No worries though, he and his Spider 9 powered Ultra4 was also on our list of drivers to feature, just a bit of a mix up.

Anyway, here’s Erik Miller. Made sure we didn’t mix this one up, sticking with the side profile of his Ultra4 with the big MILLER printed on it :) . Of course, it’s worth mentioning again, Erik did grab 2nd place at the American Rocksports, and unofficially looks like he’ll take 3rd place overall for the Ultra4 Pro Series. Spider 9 powered and all.

Spidertrax | Thom Kingston | CC BY 3.0

The battle between solid and IFS axles gets a little more fire this weekend, fueled in large part by guys like current KING of the Hammers Erik Miller. He battled it out all day with Shannon Campbell, at times literally bumping his way toward first place. In the end, Shannon took top honors with his IFS powered Ultra4, with Erik Miller just behind him at the finish line, taking home a 2nd place spot. While this one went to IFS, the close matchup will keep this debate living on (for now anyway) :) .

EDIT: Dust must still be getting to us, this shot is of none other than Greg Lundeen, yet another solid axle player!

Spidertrax | Thom Kingston | CC BY 3.0

Last weekend marked the second ever American Rocksports Challenge (ARSC), an Ultra4 short course meets man made rocks endurance competition. This years ARSC absolutely delivered, following all of last years strengths while addressing any small issues that existed before. The short course action was top notch, and more importantly the rock section was incredibly challenging, with multiple lines and bypasses to chose from. In the end, when the dust settled, we’re confident everyone left Miller Motorsports Park pumped up and ready to race this venue again.

We have plenty of photos and stories to share, and as we have done in the past, we’ll be posting a few photos a day throughout the week so as to best retell the action. For now, we’ll kick things off with the official Ultra4 scores.

Top honors went to Shannon Campbell, but it was far from a landslide. The top four were essentially neck and neck the entire race, which made from an awesome spectator event. We lead today’s blog post off with a shot of Brad Lovell and his Spider 9 powered Ultra4, who finished with a 4th place spot. This position will likely cinch the Pro Series title (top honors for all three events in series) for him and his team. This is highly unofficial of course, but based on series points it’s looking pretty good.