101 of 374 in the Mint 400 Finish Desert Race

What appeared to be the world’s largest auto wrecking yard on Saturday was turned back Sunday to the jack rabbits, lizards and Bureau of Land Management officials who inhabit the vast desert northeast of Nevada’s gambling oasis--when it isn’t given over to the Mint 400 off-road race.

More than 90,000 spectators swarmed over the 106-mile course Saturday, according to BLM estimates, to watch 374 vehicles put through a torture test by their masochistic drivers in an attempt to go 424 miles in 18 hours or less. Only 101, or 27% of the starters, made it before the 3 a.m. cutoff time.

The 273 cars that didn’t make it succumbed to a variety of ills, notably broken transmissions, lost brakes, broken cylinder heads, battered suspension, missing wheels, smashed steering, and an old favorite of the combination of a 95-degree day and high-speed racing: blown engines.

As wreckers and tow trucks spent a moonlit night hauling in cars and picking up the pieces of the 18th Mint 400, officials acted on a protest that ended up with Jack Johnson, the apparent winner of the unlimited single-seat class, being penalized one lap for having his car pushed by another vehicle within one mile of the finish line. This dropped Johnson, a three-time overall champion, to tenth place and moved defending champion Mike Lund of Huntington Beach into first.

Jim Temple of Las Vegas and Kenny Cox of Phoenix were the overall winners in Temple’s two-seater Raceco. It was the second overall win for Temple, 55, a land developer.

Rod Hall of Reno, in a four-wheel-drive Dodge, and Manny Esquerra of Parker, Ariz., in a Ford Ranger pickup, won their seventh Mint class championships. This moved them into a tie with Walker Evans for the most Mint wins. Evans, whose Dodge led for three laps in the big pickup class, had his engine seize on the last lap and lost his bid for an eighth title to Steve Kelley of Rolling Hills Estates.