Here’s the typical set-up for Rocky Mountain Race Week participants. Events like this call for a trailer-full of supplies and spare parts towed by the race car. Not fun in the rain, but that’s how it goes. Photo courtesy of Michelle Barry.

Rocky Mountain Race Week is a week-long event, similar to Drag Week, designed to test the street ability and outright performance of one’s street/strip car. Participants have to drive their cars from track to track and survive for the long haul, while competing on the track at the same time.

The side of Yost’s trailer is the perfect billboard for sponsor stickers. We’re not sure how many people are paying attention to the trailer, as much as it’s being towed by an 8-second Camaro.

Since it’s called Rocky Mountain Race Week, it should be a given that each track is located in the Rocky Mountain region, which adds to the drama, since the tracks and region are sometimes 7,000 feet above sea level. That has a huge impact on performance. Tracks include Bandimere Speedway, Pueblo Motorsports Park, S.R.C.A. Drag Strip, and Kearney Raceway Park, spread through Colorado, Nebraska, and Kansas.

At this year’s inaugural Rocky Mountain Race Week, which took place a couple weeks ago, JRi Shocks customer Eric Yost of Customs by Bigun made the trip from North Carolina to participate in the event. Yost’s familiar 1968 Camaro boasts a Harrell Engine and Dyno-built 374-inch small block Chevy with a single Work Turbochargers single turbo system with a BorgWarner S500 91mm snail. Yost’s Camaro runs a Powerglide, and for the Rocky Mountain Race Week, he used a Gear Vendors overdrive unit to average 14 mpg during the event.

The wrap on Yost’s Camaro was done by Donnie Nance, and might actually be believable, given the car’s age. And the fact that the patina looks authentic.

However, for the race portion of the event, Yost made the best of racing at altitude, and on tracks where the prep, or lack thereof, played tricks on his leaf spring set-up, he still averaged 8.51 during the event to win the Ultimate Radial category. Yost uses JRi shocks on his Camaro, of course, and he uses shock sensors within his car’s Racepak system to see what they’re doing all the way down the track. That information enables him to tune the suspension to best take advantage of his Camaro’s Mickey Thompson Drag Radial Pros. That suspension tuning ability assisted Yost in winning his class at the Rocky Mountain Race Week.