Justin Hall and RockHard-Racing Starts off the 2013 Season with a Bang

UTV Weekly | March 23, 2013

24 year old Justin Hall made the 14 hour drive out to Congress Arizona, where he would start off the 2013 Rock Crawling season with round one of the W.E. Rock Western Nationals. After battling a mysterious transmission issue earlier in the week and almost not being able to make the trip, Justin was on his way. He arrived at the event site Thursday afternoon and not more than fifteen minutes of pulling their specialty built R&B Co sponsored Unlimited Class Rock Buggy out of the hauler the transmission let go.

Feeling defeated, Justin makes a few phone calls, one of them being to Shannon Campbell. Shannon was able to talk with Tony Kane of Hughes Performance and all Justin had to do was get the transmission down to Phoenix (about an hour and a half drive) by 8am the next morning so they can start working on it. Justin has the transmission out in less than an hour with the help of Aaron Sykes and his spotter Kenny Rose. Mike Stokes lent his truck to Justin so he could load the transmission in that instead of taking the hauler down to Phoenix. By 11pm Justin had a hotel room in Phoenix about fifteen minutes from Hughes. Justin’s parents flew into Phoenix that night.

Hughes Performance had the transmission torn down and narrowed the issue down to the torque converter having too much run out cause the pump gear to break. Just to make sure they completely rebuilt the entire transmission and cut apart the converter and rebuilt that as well. All that was done in a matter of two hours, and Justin was on his way back to Congress to reassemble his buggy. By 5pm Friday, Justin’s Trail Gear/Raceline sponsored crawler was back together and he was off to the drivers meet and greet about 4 miles away.

Saturday comes around and Justin drew the first starting position. This meant he would be first up on the first half of the day and then last at the second half. He lines up on his first course of the day, A3, and had a killer run with a score of -14, which would set the tone for how the first half of the day would go for Justin and his father Mark. By the end of the first half the team had a massive 67 point lead over the 2^nd place driver, Matt Messer. Starting order flipped for the second half and now Justin went last and got the chance to watch everyone else in his class. After the next three runs, Justin locked in first place with an 80 point lead over second place.

After the event Justin was approached by long time competitor Bruce Zeller, with a little side bet. He asked if Justin would be interested in doing an exhibition shoot out course against Tracy Jordan. Bruce would sweeten the deal by passing around a hat and eventually collecting about $380 dollars to the winner. You do not get many chances to wheel with a legend in your sport, so of course Justin jumped on the opportunity. Tracy would run first and worked his Spidertrax Rock Bug through the course with hardly any issues. Justin lines up and starts the course; he would suffer a pretty healthy roll going for a bonus on the third gate but still was able to finish the course just a few points behind Tracy. Justin was met by three hundred plus fans when he crossed the finished line, he knew he lost to Tracy but he won over the crowd!

Justin and his spotter/Father Mark are looking forward to what the rest of the W.E.Rock season has to offer!

The fans in Congress made all the competitors feel like rock stars. Justin must of signed over two hundred of the W.E.Rock autograph cards (provided by Bower Motorsports Media).

Justin would like to thank all his Sponsors: R&B Co., Raceline Wheels, Ruff Stuff Specialties, Trail Gear, Fabworx, ARB, and Hughes Performance.