MIKE S
11-22-2006, 11:51 AM
Here is a short story through my eyes of our trip down to the Baja 1000. While I feel like most people wont understand how intense and how many stories we have while we are down there, I will try to explain it how it went down. Monday we arrived at our hotel just north of Ensenada. As time passes on the next few days, more and more of our chase vehicles and drivers start to arrive. Wed. rolls around and we take the rig to tech, and it checks out with no problems. After tech all of our chase teams with the exception of Aj and John hall head south to where they will camp until the race vehicle arrives.
Wed. night at 7pm we get to the drivers meeting. I was completely amazed of how many racers there was, it’s unbelievable when you see a room full of hundreds of drivers and co-drivers. As the room fills up, Sal Fish begins the drivers meeting, a few minutes later a driver sits down on the steps at the front of me at my feet. I notice that the driver in none other than Robby Gordon. This is when it really starts to hit me, this is the real deal, were really here to race the Baja 1000. After the drivers meeting, we take off and head up town with some friends that are racing in the sportsman’s buggy class. The next morning at noon we start staging the jeep, we contact the chase team that will be following us which is AJ and John hall, we then find out where they’re set up at.
One O clock rolls around and were about 2 cars back from the start. We pull up on the start, and we get the 5, 4, 3, 2, 1…GO and so the race begins for us. We drop into the first wash and I keep reminding myself to “take it easy, slow down I still have to get the rig to lance”. About 10miles into the race a Jeepspeed blows by us completely (in my opinion) out of control and is doing at least twice our speed. Shortly after the Jeepspeed passes, we get passed by two sportsman’s trucks, about another 10-15 miles down the
road the Fat city jeep, while he is not pushing hard , I decide to let him pass by, and follow in his dust for a little ways. After about 20 miles or so into the race the jeep starts
to have running issues, the same issues we have been fighting all year.
Shortly after this we hit the first silt bed, we pull into the silt bed and there is two class 5 bugs stuck right in front of me, and a class one car stuck off to my left. I give one of the class 5 bugs a push and he gets going and picks a left line out through the bushes and motors on. At this time the first Jeepspeed that passed us, comes up on our right. ( I guess some where back we must have passed him.)
As he goes by he’s sliding onto the class 5 bugs right in front of me, since he is on a pretty bad side hill. About this time I get a call on the radio from the fat city guys, telling us they are stuck about 2 cars in front of us in the silt bed, apparently as the Jeepspeed that was passing us drove by the fat city guys on the right side they rolled over. I get behind Eric from fat city to give him a push, while he is getting a tug from the front. After he gets out they pull off to the right and we drive by, but we wait a little further up the road at a steep silty hill to make sure the fat city guys make it up okay since there are only 2wd. They get up the hill okay so we motor on, Fatcity radios to us shortly after that they are having some running issues, so we stop at the next road crossing where John Hall and Aj are waiting to work on our vehicles to try out find the running issues. We Checked to make sure that our pickup in the fuel cell didn’t make it to the top of the foam, and we checked to see if our filter was clogged with foam. After Aj and John Hall Finish getting ours together they head on over to the fat city guys and find that there filter is clogged with fuel cell foam. We motor on while our chase team stays and unclogged Fat cities fuel filter, and they removed all the fuel cell foam. They radio to us and let us know that they fixed fat cities running problems,. The next point that they were going to meet up with us, they wanted to pull out our fuel cell foam, and blow out our fuel lines incase any foam was in there. So at the next point we did just that.
After that everything else went pretty much flawlessly, until we got to Coco’s corner and did our driver change. And while it would take another 3 hours to explain what else happened, the only other things we had to fix on the rig during the rest of the race, our shifter momentarily quit working on Jody, we had 2 cracked motor mounts that had to be welded, and about 47 miles before the finish the rig caught on fire, but Bob and Camo managed to put out the fire. Other than that we didn’t have one flat tire or any major breakage issue’s.
If I had to pick one moment during my leg of the race that stands out in my mind, it would be running through the big whoops coming into San Felipe, just about side by side with the Fat city guys. Id did clip a spectator with the drivers side mirror, all and all it was more of an adventure than a race.
And I can say that I am very honored to have raced with the other drivers/co-drivers on our team. But most of all would like to thank the volunteer chase teams that made the race for us, and also our sponsors.
Sponsors are:
Powertank
Currie
Radflo
Bilstein
Full traction
Roundeyes
Bfgoodrich
Pirate4x4.com
4x4oil’s
Alloy Usa
Precision gear
Wed. night at 7pm we get to the drivers meeting. I was completely amazed of how many racers there was, it’s unbelievable when you see a room full of hundreds of drivers and co-drivers. As the room fills up, Sal Fish begins the drivers meeting, a few minutes later a driver sits down on the steps at the front of me at my feet. I notice that the driver in none other than Robby Gordon. This is when it really starts to hit me, this is the real deal, were really here to race the Baja 1000. After the drivers meeting, we take off and head up town with some friends that are racing in the sportsman’s buggy class. The next morning at noon we start staging the jeep, we contact the chase team that will be following us which is AJ and John hall, we then find out where they’re set up at.
One O clock rolls around and were about 2 cars back from the start. We pull up on the start, and we get the 5, 4, 3, 2, 1…GO and so the race begins for us. We drop into the first wash and I keep reminding myself to “take it easy, slow down I still have to get the rig to lance”. About 10miles into the race a Jeepspeed blows by us completely (in my opinion) out of control and is doing at least twice our speed. Shortly after the Jeepspeed passes, we get passed by two sportsman’s trucks, about another 10-15 miles down the
road the Fat city jeep, while he is not pushing hard , I decide to let him pass by, and follow in his dust for a little ways. After about 20 miles or so into the race the jeep starts
to have running issues, the same issues we have been fighting all year.
Shortly after this we hit the first silt bed, we pull into the silt bed and there is two class 5 bugs stuck right in front of me, and a class one car stuck off to my left. I give one of the class 5 bugs a push and he gets going and picks a left line out through the bushes and motors on. At this time the first Jeepspeed that passed us, comes up on our right. ( I guess some where back we must have passed him.)
As he goes by he’s sliding onto the class 5 bugs right in front of me, since he is on a pretty bad side hill. About this time I get a call on the radio from the fat city guys, telling us they are stuck about 2 cars in front of us in the silt bed, apparently as the Jeepspeed that was passing us drove by the fat city guys on the right side they rolled over. I get behind Eric from fat city to give him a push, while he is getting a tug from the front. After he gets out they pull off to the right and we drive by, but we wait a little further up the road at a steep silty hill to make sure the fat city guys make it up okay since there are only 2wd. They get up the hill okay so we motor on, Fatcity radios to us shortly after that they are having some running issues, so we stop at the next road crossing where John Hall and Aj are waiting to work on our vehicles to try out find the running issues. We Checked to make sure that our pickup in the fuel cell didn’t make it to the top of the foam, and we checked to see if our filter was clogged with foam. After Aj and John Hall Finish getting ours together they head on over to the fat city guys and find that there filter is clogged with fuel cell foam. We motor on while our chase team stays and unclogged Fat cities fuel filter, and they removed all the fuel cell foam. They radio to us and let us know that they fixed fat cities running problems,. The next point that they were going to meet up with us, they wanted to pull out our fuel cell foam, and blow out our fuel lines incase any foam was in there. So at the next point we did just that.
After that everything else went pretty much flawlessly, until we got to Coco’s corner and did our driver change. And while it would take another 3 hours to explain what else happened, the only other things we had to fix on the rig during the rest of the race, our shifter momentarily quit working on Jody, we had 2 cracked motor mounts that had to be welded, and about 47 miles before the finish the rig caught on fire, but Bob and Camo managed to put out the fire. Other than that we didn’t have one flat tire or any major breakage issue’s.
If I had to pick one moment during my leg of the race that stands out in my mind, it would be running through the big whoops coming into San Felipe, just about side by side with the Fat city guys. Id did clip a spectator with the drivers side mirror, all and all it was more of an adventure than a race.
And I can say that I am very honored to have raced with the other drivers/co-drivers on our team. But most of all would like to thank the volunteer chase teams that made the race for us, and also our sponsors.
Sponsors are:
Powertank
Currie
Radflo
Bilstein
Full traction
Roundeyes
Bfgoodrich
Pirate4x4.com
4x4oil’s
Alloy Usa
Precision gear