2026 Hemmings Great Race presented by Coker Tire - Day 8

From desert heat and intense wind to the cool breeze of Southern California, we saw it all on today's course. We started in Laughlin, Nevada and spent the morning rallying through the desert. There were challenging instructions along the way, and we experienced a high speed maze (which are usually performed at low speeds) that had racers heading in multiple directions on a giant loop before heading into Twentynine Palms, California for lunch. Our lunch at Luckie Park had a great turnout of people and the racers made a quick turn around to get back on the clock for the afternoon portion of the course. 

We headed directly into Joshua Tree National Park and the teams rallied through the entire park, which had plenty of challenges and of course, beautiful scenery. From there, it was long afternoon route that went back down in elevation to North Palm Springs, where the winds were the most intense we've experienced in this race. After coming off the clock, we hit Interstate 10 and made our way into San Bernardino, California for the hosted evening stop, which was held at San Manuel Stadium. Our dinner consisted of burgers and dogs, and a special treat included tickets to the Inland Empire 66ers minor league baseball game! Winning Stage 8 was Jack Pontius and Dan Stahl in the 1916 Hudson Speedster with a score of 7.92 seconds on an extremely challenging day. Today's scores really tightened up the leaderboard, and we'll crown the Grand Champions tomorrow in Pasadena.