The Baja races can be described like this. Take insanity, persistence, preparation, sleepless nights, long days, dust, race gas, money, adrenaline, beer, tacos and alot of on the fly mechanical work and a little luck - throw it into a blender and pour it out onto the dirt in Baja to have a race. Its an amazing and magical thing. Here is the story of the Baja 500. First thing is first, you have to know the course. Unlike a typical race where the track is constant and the turns all well marked, Baja is new every year. In addition even if you DO remember part of the course the weather probably changed it since the last time you were on it. That means you have to Pre-run it. You literally drive the whole course and mark points to remember or avoid - like boulders and silt beds. Pre-running is early mornings and late nights. It can make for taking a nap where ever you manage to find a spot. Like in a tire... And in some cases the pre-runner may not make it back. Our driver and co-driver spent the night in the desert after braking a steering component. They had to get another pre-runner to bring the part out for us. We welded it back together and I bombed one of the chase trucks over the Valley T road (more on that road later) to an access point on the other side of the mountains and had to find another group to take it in to the broken truck. They put it on and got it got them out. Then we continued to pre-run with the part in place. Broken in half steering... Fixed it... During pre-running we took a single lane dirt road through the mountain range so avoid going around the peninsula, it a road that has views into huge ranches and at one point we came nose to nose with a rancher who had horse in the bed of his pickup with jury-rigged sides and tailgate. This is a shot or the road leading to the mountain pass turn off. Below is a few shots from the road One of the chase trucks I l drove and lived out of for a week... The tacos in Mexico are amazing, especially in Vally De Trinidad. Its a small town with a taco stand in the middle. Its kind of nuts to see millions of dollars in vehicles all pulled up to get some tacos during pre-running. When ever you pull up any where kids come swarming up to the trucks looking for stickers and handouts. I GPSd the spot so that I can go back, its that good. Photo-op for the kids with the pre-runner. Tacos!!! After a week or two of mapping the course its time for Tech and Contingency. Tech and contingency is hard to describe... The Baja is like the superbowl to Mexico but with more people no tickets to buy and way more beer. There are literally hundreds of thousands of people there to check out the trucks, get stickers, pictures and just to talk with us. It can get oppressive at some points from the sheer volume of people. But its a party and its amazing how the atmosphere is alive with energy, music and smoke from taco carts. You can see the crowds in the pics below. That is one small section of road. Something to remember to... When you hit a military checkpoint in Mexico its usually an ordeal, they search your vehicles and hold you up. But if you have a chase truck and some stickers they just wave you through passed all the tourists and commuters. On race day its even better they see you coming and don't even stop you and if they do its just long enough to grab a sticker and send you on fast. oNext up is qualifying. They take every truck out to a predetermined spot and you run the lap to decide where you will start. Its a dusty hot day and you get to see the trucks your up against. Its also neat because the lap takes the trucks passed the crews in a few different places so you actually get to watch your truck rather than just pit it. Its important to start close to the front. if you don't your driver is eating dust the whole race as they attempt to move up in the field. Also the further back you are the more the dust hangs in the air. So the longer you sit at the start waiting the worse visibility gets. Some qualifying pics. After qualifying its time to clean the truck and check for damage and get ready for the race. Race day is insane on many levels. Your driving, fixing fueling and chasing trucks for almost 24 hours. After being up all day and most of the night prepping everything to make sure its perfect... The following morning after no sleep your up extremely early driving to the pit areas to set up and get ready for about 1 minute of time with the truck. When they pit its about 1 to 2 minutes - yes minutes to change tires, dump 40-80 gallons of gas in the truck and then it speeds off. Leaving the crew to pack up and race to the next pit to set up again. Its alot of hurry up and wait for a few massive adrenaline dumps. Along the way from pit to pit you experience some driving that would get people arrested in the states. It causes some pucker factor and can result in accidents or worse. One of the reasons the Baja races are considered some of the most dangerous, if not the most dangerous, race in the world is that its an open track. That is the equivalent of being able to stand on the track at a NASCAR race. NASCAR however has no dust, no jumps, no boobie traps - yes they build hazards to wreck the trucks- and no people trying to take a picture of the truck AS IT COMES AT THEM. No kidding people will stand on the course and take a selfie with the truck coming at them. They also line the course so if a truck brakes something or rolls it will go into the crowd and people have died. Speaking of rolling.... Right after passing us at a pit the Trophy Truck rolled 4 1/4 times. I say 1/4 because it ended up on its side. We jumped in the chase truck and took off to get to it. With the help of some spectators we pushed it back onto 4 wheels and assessed the damage. a blown tire, missing body panels and a trashed lightbar - the main light for night driving was badly mangled. We changed the tire, tore off lose panels and fired the truck back up. Like a champ it kept going. In 6 minutes we had it running again and on its way. Try that with a daily driver. Thats me standing on the truck checking everything I could see for leaks and damage and removing the battered light bar. One of our sponsors - Method Race Wheels happened to have a camera running... Below is one shot in his sequence that later became magazine ad. Impressive photography managing to catch the entire sequence. After packing up and racing to the next pit we pulled the bar out and tried to figure out how to fix it. The control actuators were toast so it would swing free and could not be aimed. I figured out if we welded one side in place the other could still swing free - that meant we did not have to try and line it up without the truck there to get it right. So we borrowed a stick welder... And it worked - kind of... the truck was a bit tweaked from the roll so I had to get creative - in comes my sledge hammer. The drivers eyes got very wide as I jumped on the tire and took a swing and seated one side of the bar. I ran around to the other and another few swings later and that bastard was not moving again. They had to cut it in half to remove it after the race during tear down... But it worked and now the driver had light. He tore off into the night with a badly battered truck missing most of its body panels so it had no aerodynamics. But we still managed to take 14th from what I remember... The after math at the finish and the next day when we could actually look at the truck a bit better in the light. So tired... Cold Beer... Rode on the back of the truck back to the trailer because I didn't want to walk at that point Before the race.... And the aftermath My lightbar fix held! Baja is incredible, the people there are amazing. The fans are second to non and everyone is excited and screaming for each and every truck that comes by. Its an experience that's hard to shake free from. Adrenalin, no sleep and hard work. The crazy thing is it happens so fast and is over so quick that its not until your home and decompress that you realize what you were just a part of. You realize that what you just did, the danger and the extreme amount of work and 1000's of miles driving on and off road in a week... Its something everyone should experience even as just a spectator.
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December 2016
AuthorDirt roads, getting lost, dark nights in the middle of no where and photographing adventures. Travel
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