Jesse Haines Pulls Out a Second Place Win at Cal-Neva Extreme Despite a Very Tempramental Car

April and May have been a busy couple of months for me. In the past 7 weekends I've competed in 4 rockcrawling events, and the Silver State desert race. This weekend was the 2nd event of the Cal-Neva Extreme series, and the event was held at the Exit 28 Motorsports Park in Reno, NV. The competition site at Exit 28 has arguably the best rockcrawling terrain of any place I've ever been in my 8 years of competing. This series is as competitive as any crawling series out there, and after winning the 1st event last month we were off to a good start.
 
Last weekend's shootout run at the We-Rock event in Oroville caused extensive damage to the car and left us with just 5 days to get ready for the Cal-Neva event. A long list of repairs were made to the car, and it was back together and ready to test out late Thursday night. On Friday, during testing the car had an issue with the new transmission slipping on steep angles and we were getting a running issue that sounded like the car was running out of fuel. We checked the fluid level in the trans, and the dipstick said it was a half pint low. We added a quart and decided to check it again the morning of the event. The car was pretty very on fuel so we assumed the running problem was just that, the car running out of gas.
 
When the event started on Saturday morning my spotter AJ Seckman and I thought the car was ready to go. All of the fluid levels were good and everything seemed to be working. Early into our 1st course we attempted a bonus climb and as the front tires crested the top and grabbed traction the trans quit pulling. I gave it more and more throttle, but the car wouldn't move. We continued to struggle and could not finish the course. With the teams we were up against I knew the chances of us coming back to win now were slim. We worked on the car to try and find the issue between courses and suspected the trans was low on fluid. The dipstick had always been accurate and it was saying it was full. We dumped 2 more quarts in the trans to see if it would help. On the next course the trans worked perfectly, but near the end of the course the running issue came back! The car was hesitating and stalling like it was running out of fuel. After that course we tried changing the fuel pump. On our 3rd course the car ran even worse and it would barely run when we finished the course. Five minutes later the car ran great, but we tried changing the fuel filter hoping it would help. The car ran fine for the rest of the weekend after that! We pulled the old (5 week old) fuel filter apart later and it still looked like new inside. I don't know what the problem really was, but it never happened again.
 
Despite the mechanical troubles we were having we were putting down some pretty good scores. We made up some ground on the 1st place team of Brent Bradshaw and Chris Poblano, but still trailed by 25 points at the end of the first day. On day 2 we did everything we could to make up ground. We completed all but 1 of the bonus lines on the day 2 courses as AJ and I tried put pressure on the leaders. Despite a valiant effort our comeback attempt came up short this time and Brent and Chris took the win by 15 points. We're now tied for first in the series so it's gonna be a battle to the end. The next 2 Cal-Neva Extreme events take place at the Donner Ski Ranch in Norden, California on July 9-10th, and the finals on August 20-21st.