No Diamond Lane : Carpooling to Work Takes On New Meaning in Off-Road Race

You are in a car creeping toward the starting line, with the same jitters you’ve had dozens of times before. This is the worst part of the race, any race. The waiting.

As the sun rises over the mountains and the Saturday start gets closer, you notice the dust hanging in the air from the wake of the first vehicles off the line, the trophy trucks and the Class 1 buggies that will reach speeds of 130 mph over the course’s fastest sections. There’s very little wind, and that’s a bad sign, because you’ll be driving through a dusty fog as those bigger, faster vehicles pass. Worse, the co-rider is a reporter whom you will actually entrust to help change a tire if the need arises.

What are you, an idiot?

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Finally, Darren Skilton leaves the start-finish line at 6:49 a.m., 15 seconds after the previous car. He speeds down the long row of pits that line the beginning (and end) of the course, with fans on both sides pumping their arms in a show of support for his Kia Sportage, the automotive equivalent of the Little Engine That Could. As he passes the semitrailer truck that is his base, he beep-beeps the horn and waves because that’s the signature in the Kia commercials. And because it’s the last time he will pass for two hours.

Skilton is lucky because temperatures won’t rise to the 114 degrees of a week earlier. But that doesn’t mean it won’t be like driving in an oven at various points on the 62-mile Stoddard Valley off-road course used for the 26th SCORE Fireworks 250 July 12.

No classes he took at Cal State Fullerton prepared him for this.

Skilton, 29, is no longer thinking about his pit crew, which was a concern, because all they talked about earlier in the week was heading to Lake Havasu when the race was over.

They have prepared the car well, except for the one glitch on the second mile--a straightaway in which he accelerates to more than 70 mph. The steering wheel comes off in Skilton’s hands. He swears under his breath, snaps it back on but refuses to rail on them over the radio because it’s going to be a long, long day. In hindsight, he will say it’s his own fault because--for the first time this season--he didn’t test it before the start.

This is the fifth race of the seven-race SCORE Desert Championship Series. Skilton is one of the few drivers who has a factory-backed team, a testament to his driving prowess and marketing hustle.

He grew up around racing because his father, Clive Skilton, was a top fuel dragster and funny car driver. And Clive mortgaged everything he had when Darren was a kid to buy an auto dealership that now supports the race team, Team Don-A-Vee.

But Skilton, an Orange County native and Woodbridge High graduate, was not born with a silver spoon in his mouth. Yes, his father helped him in the early years. But he also finished second in his class in the Baja 500 in his second SCORE off-road race and posted similar times against more advanced cars when starting out.

Dad was going to sponsor someone. It might as well be his son.

Skilton was resented by other crew members when he was growing up in the pits. They felt he was only there because of his dad. Other drivers felt that way, too. Even his pit crew in the past. But that’s behind him. At the team meeting on Friday, he tells his father what to do and his orders are followed. This team, he boasts, is totally unselfish.

One team member, crew chief Barrie Thompson, drives from Apple Valley to Skilton’s Bellflower shop four times a week. If that isn’t unselfish, what is? So Skilton thinks he is in good hands, but on this day, only time will tell. There is one thing that’s certain about racing in Barstow: This is an endurance test.

As the Kia reaches speeds over 90 mph and struggles up steep inclines at no more than 5, it is challenged by terrain that gives nothing away to the rocky surface of Mars. The Barstow course, mile for mile, is the most difficult of any series course.

And it feels like it. The Kia feels almost every bump in the road, unlike the cars in the bigger classes that have more suspension. To win--or just to finish in one piece--Skilton must be mature enough to take his foot off the throttle.

This is a race that 137 cars will start and only 79 will finish.

Because he is in a slower class, Class 3 for short wheelbase 4x4s, he goes only three laps--186 miles--instead of four. The trade-off is that the car and driver take more pounding than the other cars in the race that go the full 248.4 miles.

Kia, Skilton’s Irvine-based sponsor, wants him to show that theirs is a durable car. It has 165 horsepower, about 35 more than the one you could drive off the showroom floor, and a modified suspension system. Obviously.

So far, Skilton has completed every mile of every race, and that is his goal today.

He looks as far ahead as his eyes will allow, scanning for a ditch, bump, or rock that will ruin the day. He logs in his mind danger points that to a novice all look the same. He can’t write them down--or have the reporter do so--because there’s more rock and roll in the car than in that museum in Cleveland.

He processes as much information as possible. The length of the race, the section of the course and how hard it is on the car. Whether he is going fast enough or too slow. And can he go faster without being too hard on the equipment? How far can he push it?

At each of the five pits and a few of the accessible eight checkpoints he passes, Skilton’s support team is there to watch him go past. They’re really there in case he needs something, but if all goes well, he won’t. Not on the first lap, anyway.

They are involved in their own race. Thompson and Todd Mason are in Chase Vehicle 1. They’re on the payroll. Steve Thomasson and his wife, Linda, are in Chase 2. They’re volunteers. They met Skilton, thought he was a decent guy and decided to get involved. And they were competent. So they’re in the middle of the desert in the middle of summer, waving and telling him over the radio that there doesn’t appear to be any damage to the back of the car from getting bumped by an impatient Class 1 buggy on a rocky sliver of road that was only one lane wide.

Chase 1 and Chase 2 criss-cross a series of roads inside the course, trying to reach each pit to watch the Kia for the 30 seconds they have a visual. They are like a lot of other teams out here.

“There’s Ivan,” he says as Ivan “Ironman” Stewart’s Toyota Trophy Truck screams past, showering the cockpit with rocks out from under its rear wheels. Others kick up rocks, too, but there’s only one Ironman, and it’s a badge of honor to say you’ve been pelted by a legend.

By the time Skilton reaches the start-finish line in 1 hour 56 minutes, the trophy trucks have been racing for three hours and lapped the Kia. The spectators along the fourth mile rejoice when it overtakes a Baja Bug. They go crazy because they’re watching real racing instead of the most common sight: Single cars filing past. And a Kia battling a VW bug on a straightaway--what could be more entertaining?

There are moments in the race when Skilton treats himself and looks into the faces and body language of those spectators. And he draws conclusions from the smiles, the cheers and the waves.

“Everyone loves the Kia,” he says. “It’s the ultimate David vs. Goliath vehicle.”

Skilton runs the second lap more aggressively than the first as the 35-gallon fuel load gets lighter. After jarring the front end on a ditch at the bottom of a hill on Mile 34 of the second lap, he screeches a profanity and worries that the car might be damaged. When he reaches Pit E at the 42-mile mark, Steve Thomasson looks for obvious damage. The stop is for less than 30 seconds. Thomasson finds nothing. Skilton is on his way.

“The car is your best friend and it talks to you,” he says.

The second lap takes longer to complete because Skilton often must stop to negotiate the wall of dust that obscures his vision as faster cars go past.

He completes it in two hours and pulls up to the semi to fuel. The refueling goes smoothly, partly because of the care Todd Sampson has taken to make sure it will.

Skilton’s lead over his chief competitor is 40 minutes, and the early stages of the third lap feel a lot like a victory lap as he passes the fans.

People are situated in some of the most remote outposts. How did they ever get out here? Some of the people moon the car as it passes, which is not uncommon. Three guys wearing sombreros whom Skilton noticed have been drinking since Lap 1, spell out K-I-A using their bodies. He finds time to laugh in those moments.

But shortly thereafter, he isn’t laughing. A quarter-mile past Mile 23, the car loses its steering. He manages to get it off the road and the co-rider radios for help. A broken tie rod--fractured on that nasty bump 43 miles ago--on the left wheel is the culprit. Within four minutes, Chase 1 and 2 are there, along with Skilton’s sister and girlfriend who are in another car. It’s the only time during the race he takes a drink of water. Eleven minutes later, it has been fixed. In the middle of nowhere, the Chase teams were right there.

However, he feels this is again a race. He doesn’t want to break the car. He thinks he still has a sizable lead, but can’t afford a flat tire or another breakdown.

Skilton doesn’t think about the wrenching pain in his back from jarring side-to-side turbulence. Or his neck, which feels as if it weighs 40 pounds from supporting a four-pound helmet over the course of what is essentially a six-hour car wreck.

He gets more excited as the finish line gets nearer. Thompson, his radio contact throughout the race, lets him know there are only 15 miles left. From there, it becomes a countdown. And as the final miles tick away, Skilton allows himself to playfully chide Thompson for the steering wheel incident almost six hours earlier.

When he passes the fans lining the last two miles of the course and pulls into the finish line as the winner and Class 3 champion after 6 hours 15 minutes 45 seconds, it’s water he takes, a kiss from his girlfriend, and plenty of handshakes from the support team. And then they go to the lake.