In just his fifth race, Ronn Bailey driving car #199 jumped out in front of the pack and led the first two and a half laps of the race with a significant gap ahead of the nearest competitor.
Midway through the second lap, Bailey rounded a turn and crested a hill to unexpectedly find a slow-moving truck, towing a disabled race vehicle down the race course which is a violation of race rules as it endangers lives. Bailey was near top speed when he came around a turn and spotted the vehicles which were almost at a complete stop, barely moving. The course was extremely narrow with trees and obstacles on either side, no place to go around. Bailey managed to execute an emergency stop without hitting the vehicles yet managed to avoid the obstacle - a another competitor was driving hard, moving very fast trying to catch up with Bailey when they came around the turn the air was full of dust from 199's emergency stop, there was no wind to blow it away so it just hung in the air. The pilot choose to drive straight into the dust blind thinking the course was straight and he would pop out the other side. His co-pilot told him to hit the brakes as they could not see. Just as the pilot began to apply the brakes they crashed into the back of Bailey's car pretty much at top speed exploding the metal tubing in several places forcing the rear part of chasis into the engine.
Ronn realized that they were in the middle of nowhere in the mountains of the Nevada high-desert and needed to get his car back to the pits. After some tweaking and bending they managed to get the car running but the accelerator pedal was almost inoperable and insisted upon sticking to the floor. Quick thinking gave Ronn the idea to zip-tie and duct tape his foot to the pedal so that he could continue the race.
Bailey states, "We were about half way through the course at this point. In front of us were pits "C", "D" and the Main Pit. We wanted to drive all the way to the Main Pit and then fix the throttle. When we got moving I was able to use my foot and leg to manage the throttle but soon realized our make shift repair was too dangerous to attempt "dead-man's curve." So we opted to stop at pit "C" to effect repairs. It was a good choice. The damage was far more extensive than realized. We also recognized at this time my co-pilot received greater injuries than realized during the adrenaline of the moment. He was unable to continue the race due to his injuries. While attempting repairs in pit "C" we found another person to take his place. There was another race car broken down. We took parts from it in attempts to fix my car and the pilot of this race car agreed to be my co-pilot to finish the race. We were not able to repair my race car in pit "C"."
