KORE Takes 2nd in Class 8 at Mint 400

The 2010 Mint 400 was the first race for the new KORE Class 8 truck.  A day prior to the race, the team was testing in Gene, Nevada and lost a transmission.  The team chalked it up to bad luck, swapped transmissions and called it a day.  Four miles into the race the second transmission failed.  It took two hours to extract the truck from the desert, then 40 minutes to change the transmission.  Driver Kent Kroeker and Mike Kerr took the truck through the start of the race for the second time – 3 hours behind the rest of the class.

After hard, but solid driving by Kroeker, Rudy Iribe and Finnish WRC Champion Harri Rovanpera, by race mile 390, team KORE was in the lead again.  Kent Kroeker was driving with Frank Martinek navigating.

Ten miles from the finish line, 20 miles ahead of their competition, the bung in the passenger-side trailing arm let go.  There was no way to drive the truck from that point.  Using both spare tires, a mechanical jack, a shovel and the truck’s nitrogen jack system, Kroeker and Martinek positioned the truck in such a way that they could align the suspension components correctly.

A nearby checkpoint crew then welded the parts together while Kroeker and Martinek watched their competition drive by.

20 minutes later, Team KORE rolled across the finish line for 2nd place.