What an epic Round 4 competition! The battle was fierce all weekend long, but in the end Brent Bradshaw with his Spider 9 powered moon buggy walked away with not only the event win but the high honors of sweeping the entire Unlimited Western Series. Also, congratulations to Nick Campbell for winning both the event and series for the Pro Mod class.  Thanks to all who followed our live updates on Twitter and stay tuned as next up for us will be the Ultra4 Stampede where the Rock Bug will be back in action.

    

    

    

    

This weekend marks the end of the 2011 Western W.E.Rock series and the competition is guaranteed to be fierce. We’ll be out there in usual form, providing our “live” updates, photos, & videos in an effort to capture all the amazing action. For those looking to attend and/or follow our updates online, here’s your “What You Need to Know” cheat sheet.

1) Where Is It?
Donner Ski Ranch
19320 Donner Pass Road
Norden, CA 95724

2) When Is It?
August 6th & 7th (Saturday & Sunday) @ 10:00 am

3) I Can’t Make It…Will There Be Online Coverage?
If you can’t make it, we’ll be there posting updates every 10-15 minutes on Twitter @ http://twitter.com/Spidertrax . Also for all you Facebook junkies, we’ll be posting photos after the event so be sure to Like our fan page @ https://www.facebook.com/Spidertrax .

That should get you rolling and ready for the weekend. Hope to see everyone out there and for those that can’t make it, we’ll see you online!

Once again, the Pro Modified & Unlimited drivers of W.E.Rock take on the man made course of Miller Motorsports Park for this years Round 3 rock crawling competition. The battle was fierce for two days, but in the end Brent Bradshaw (Unlimited) & Nick Campbell (Pro Modified) would prove victorious with their solid non-stop performance.

As this blog post is about 2 weeks late (sorry), I’ll skip the long essay and let you dive right into all the photos and videos from this event. Hope you enjoy and don’t forget to clear your calendar for W.E.Rock’s Round 4 competition which heads to Donner Ski Ranch, CA on August 6th.

When I bumped into John Gardner, Media Director of Miller Motorsports Park, I couldn’t help but ask “How big is this place?”. He responded with a smile “511 acres. I like telling people we’re 3-1/2 times the size of Disneyland with better rides.” He wasn’t kidding! I’ve gone to countless rock crawling competitions over the past decade and this one is easily among the best.  Put simply, W.E.Rock Round 4 at Miller Motorsports Park was THE rock crawling event of the year.

The battle was fierce all weekend long in both Unlimited & Pro-Mod classes with each team not only working on an event win but shooting for the 2010 Season Title. In the end, Dion Wakefiled & Jesse Haines rained victory by grabbing the Unlimited & Pro-Mod top honors for the weekend (final scores for both classes below).  Although not officially announced until October’s Grand Nationals event, the 2010 Season Title will go to Brent Bradshaw of Unlimited and Troy Bailey of Pro-Mod.

The “2010 W.E.Rock Round 4 | Highlights” video above is a small tribute and testament to the many teams running Spidertrax Spider 9 Axles & Components during this event.  To the many drivers & spotters who support us and what we do here, thank you!

The Grand Nationals, which is rock crawling’s All Star Game, heads back to Miller Motorsports Park on October 1st & 2nd.  We’ll be there again providing live updates via Twitter (http://twitter.com/Spidertrax) and hope you join us in person or online for what promises to be another amazing event.

When we created the Rock Bug, designing a high performance rear steer axle was a must for driver Tracy Jordan.  We understood Tracy’s position on this one as anyone who can master the art of rear steer is virtually unstoppable in the rocks and Tracy Jordan is without question one of those masters.  Unfortunately, with nearly twice as many W.E.Rock competitors in the more restrictive 2009 Pro-Mod class, which doesn’t allow rear steer, Tracy decided to run a solid rear axle in the Rock Bug in an effort to compete against as many drivers as possible. Although the 2009 competition was a complete success for both Tracy and the Rock Bug, you could tell Tracy was missing his rear steer axle.

Now we’ll fast forward to March 27th, 2010 as W.E.Rock kicked off a brand new rock crawling competition season in Oroville, CA.  Although Tracy would run the Rock Bug’s rear steer axle any chance he could get, word was the number of competitors in each class was inline with last year (around 12 Unlimited and 24 Pro-Mod rigs). So, like last year, the decision was made to run the Rock Bug as a Pro-Mod rig.  Then, literally 1 hour before the start of the competition in Oroville, everything got turned upside down.

As it happened, we discovered the morning of the event both Unlimited & Pro-Mod classes had nearly the same number of competitors (about 12 in each class).  Although the Rock Bug was set up as a Pro-Mod, there was no question that for the rest of the W.E.Rock season Tracy would be running the Unlimited class with the Rock Bug’s rear steer axle.  The question of the day though was what to do about this first event.  Do we run the Rock Bug in Pro-Mod and then Unlimited for the rest of the year eliminating any chance of capturing the season title? Do we attempt to run the Rock Bug as set for Pro-Mod (37” tires and no rear steer) in the Unlimited class, something that has to date never been done before, so that the season title could possibly be captured?  With no easy answer in site and now less then 1 hour before show time, Tracy calls for a coin toss.  Heads we run Pro-Mod, tails we run Unlimited.  I flipped the coin and tails it was.

Now making a very long story short, for the next two days Tracy Jordan battled it out with his Pro-Mod rig in the Unlimited class. This meant he would compete against rigs with larger tires and rear steer axles.  In the end, Tracy would prove once again why he is rained as one of the best rock crawlers in the world as he pulled off what seemed nearly impossible.  In a Pro-Mod rig, Tracy Jordan won Unlimited!

Tracy & the Rock Bug will be back competing in the Unlimited class  May 1-2 in Tucson, AZ and this time with 40” tires and a rear steer axle.  In the meantime, check out the video above of Tracy Jordan running the final obstacle of the competition, The Shootout, a course where only 1 other driver out of 12 was able to complete.  We also have a great collection of photos below from ace photographer Chad Jock showing off some of the many  teams running Spidertrax Spider 9 axles & components.