Best in the Desert’s annual trek from Las Vegas to Reno, dubbed The Long Way Race, spans 1000 miles and three days of hot-shoe driving across stretches of land that remain uninhabited for very legitimate reasons. For that casual road trip in the family minivan, the journey usually takes around eight hours on 450 miles of planned asphalt, but what fun would that be?
The taxing endurance race across the arid Nevada terrain was held August 20-22, and a new steering rack and rear differential later, Rod Hall Racing’s Chad Hall and Emily Miller chugged across the finish line to take 1st place in their respective classes. Given the 1000-mile race distance, each race day featured over 300 miles of driving, usually at non-highway speeds. The route was silty, rough, and contained sections of long, sweeping, graded roads, conditions suitable to test the mettle of any off-road racer.
Behind the wheel of her inline-five-powered Hummer H3 and with support from co-driver Sam Cothrun and her pit crew, Miller overcame a rear-differential failure to complete the race in 29 hours, 21 minutes, and 41.742 seconds, claiming the 3100 Stock Mini class for stock-based mini and mid-sized SUVs.
Chad Hall experienced a seal failure in his Hummer H3 Alpha’s rack-and-pinion steering system, but that was not enough to deter him and co-driver Thad Stump from taking the gold in the 4100 Stock Full class for stock-based full-size SUVs. Hall took a penalty on the first day due to the repairs, but with some hasty driving, he finished the race in 31 hours, 10 minutes, and 51.734 seconds. The penalty accounted for a total of 14 hours and 45 minutes.
With the conclusion of the TSCO Vegas to Reno The Long Way, the next BOTD event is the Bilek Racing Silver State 300 held - September 25-27.
The unofficial results in .pdf format are available here (note: Miller’s results are under Rod Hall’s name).