pretty good torr show last week........that pistol guy is a DICK! ...http://www.kceoradio.com/marketwrap/torr/TORR070710.mp3....a ton of good info and ideas...and entertaining as well with good guests.......

This is a hard situation but in the end -things need to be spread out to not allow handle bar guys with tt's , Its a deadly situation . For God's sakes they don't have go -carts racing with big foot right ? Jess

I've caught bikes in the jeepspeed at Henderson when they raced 2 hours before us on the same track. Then again in Baja in the Filarski mobile. It's not good! I can't imagine a car twice as fast catching bikes in heavy dust while in contention for a win.

The video of the guy on the bike that got hit just before Norman came through is crazy. He is on a smooth dirt road, sitting down and barely moving. He even got passed right before the video by a farm quad. Bikes used to always get the overall, but not any more. The TT's and Class 1's are faster now. In this years 500 the first bikes came through MM 360ish with about the same split times as the TT's, but only 2-3 bikes then at least an hour went by before another came through.

Something needs to be done, but it will be a hard decision and someone will not be happy, and it will create controversy.

We caught up with the some side by sides last year at Henderson and the Silverstate...

A little better than hitting a bike but it was definetly something I was thinking about when we were bombing through the silt.

Being new to desert racing I didn't make sense to me that they'd be out in front of us.

Something needs to be done, but it will be a hard decision and someone will not be happy, and it will create controversy.The answer is already out there and it doesn't mean anything drastic.

http://www.dakar.com/2006/presentation/us/r1_prev_securite.html
SENTINEL

Tested on different 2004 World Cup events and used successfully on the 2005 Dakar, Sentinel is a safety horn whose function is to facilitate overtaking between cars, bikes and trucks.Sentinel is linked to the horn of the vehicle that wants to overtake. When the horn is sounded, Sentinel transmits the information digitally to the target vehicle up to 150 metres in open terrain. The driver or rider of the target vehicle receives a sound warning (110dB buzzer) and is visually informed (powerful 50-diode flashing light). He then replies to the vehicle following, whose race number has been digitally transmitted, by briefly sounding his own horn. The former then receives an OK-to-pass signal (sound and light).

Sentinel is also fitted with a powerful alarm function with a range of up to 500 metres in open terrain which issues a warning if an accident has occurred or a vehicle has come to a halt but is out of sight. A sound and light sequence is triggered in all vehicles arriving on the scene, or approaching a vehicle that is stuck in the sand behind a dune.

The answer is already out there and it doesn't mean anything drastic.

http://www.dakar.com/2006/presentation/us/r1_prev_securite.html

that is NOT the answer......if you raced you would know that.......if you dont believe me ask any competitive tt driver........the guy that got hit at the 500 pulled out onto the track immediately after being passed, no amount of buzzers or lights would have made any difference, .....if you havent been inside the cab of a tt in blinding dust at a 80+ trying to pass you wont understand........

why not let the cars and trucks go first........seem easy enough

The bike guys haul ass...

Almost need to race a different day.

The bike guys haul ass...

Almost need to race a different day.

true but it might be alittle safer for a bike to come up on a truck at high speeds

Read alot of the RDC thread on the subject but fell behind and don"t want to invest the time in catching up.

Pete is right the problem is that you have a small percentage of Bike racers that are really fast and the rest are trail riders. I can see all three sides. Bike, Car, Promoter.

I have riden bikes my whole life, and would love to race Baja on a bike, but fact is....... I don't really want to die down there, and I am fairly sure its a 50-50 chance I will on a bike. No car driver sets out to just run some one over, even in the slower stuff I have driven you can't see your hand in front of your face at times. No you can not slow down or you compound the problem for the people behind you.

The last part to balance is the promoter. Adding a day means adding way more expense, and taxing your labor force with zero gain, it just doubles the work for the same return.

This may have already been said on RDC, but please feel free to suggest to who ever will listen Pete if it has not been said already.

I remember SCORE had a Safari class when I was a kid for all the people who just wanted to run the Baja races and where not racing to win. They need to bring that back.

IMHO if you are a Pro Bike rider you are smart enough to know your race is over when the TT's come calling.

My plan;
1.)Start PRO Bike classes another 2 hours earlier, each rider in the pro classes have to show they are qualified. Race experience in AMA, BITD races or equal sanction body if you have not already raced with SCORE.
2.) Reduce entry fee for sportsman bike to make it worth while for the sportsman bike riding in ruts the whole way. having started in the back it really sucks how bad the course gets tore up, and its the biggest reason I have tried to move up to faster cars.
3.) Move the Car starting times up at least one hour so the last starters are not racing all night. TT may still catch the Pro Bikes but it would be closer to finishing times. The winning bikes are about the same speed as the TT's so if they have a two/three hour gap it should give a cushion for the "on the Bubble" riders.
4.) likely going to have to start the sportsman bikes before some of the slower car classes, but not many, SCORE has the data they can figure out speeds.
5.) require every bike to have a tracker. I am not an IRC fan, so in a perfect world I would allow a spot tracker as a substitute. At the last check points the check point workers need to warn the pro bikes that the TT's are on there asses, and pull out bikes that are just too slow. ( close the check points to slow bikes)
6.) If you can't stay out in front of the car classes you need your card pulled. Consitant non performance and you should get bumped. Not after one race, but if you are in car traffic 3 races your gone. Go back to D37, or BITD and get more practice, come back when you are faster.

Its not perfect, but let me tell a story about a guy who thought he was a bad ass. Never raced a motorcycle in his life. He watched Dust 2 Glory and decided he was going to iron man the 1000. when we found him he was out of his mind, did not even know his name, could not even walk. the bike was in perfect shape, I offered to ride it to Loreto as I knew that section of course like the back of my hand so the next rider could get on(there was no next rider). He kept saying his crew was in Loreto. At this point almost all the fast cars had come through. At the time we did not know he was an iron man.

His crew was his wife, and his 70 year old Dad, an SUV and a Uhaul trailer. Thats a guy who should never ever be in front of an 800 HP Truck. He had no business "racing" the Baja1000. He should have been behind the cars trail riding it.


You can not just tell people No you can't race the Baja 1000. Its the dream that makes Baja what it is. It has been my dream since I was 9 years old. My first trip 6 years ago was like a drug, and I keep going back. Finding the balance that allows people to live the dream is important.

Hopefully SCORE gets it worked out, I might be inclined to race the Baja on a bike if they do, as I have a 14 year old who thinks he is bullet proof, and wants to do it on a bike someday, "Dad, those guys are the real Men!"

BUT I am NEVER getting on a bike in front of TT's and Class one cars.... NEVER! Unless my Kid is a D37 bad ass, AND can prove to me he can run at Vegas To Reno in front of the cars he is not racing in Baja in its current form.


Sorry its long, but I don't think there is a simple solution to the problem.

2009 SS 300 we got to within about 20-30 miles of the finish line in class 7200. Tight, curvy fast canyon. Kept running up on somone's dust, but couldn't get close enough to see them. It was tough deciding whether to push through and go for a pass or sit back and ride it out to the finish. Big day ending rocks on both sides of the course. I would start to push and then Brad would yell at me to not risk our race for that last pass. Finally got to the last couple miles and saw that it was a bike, then I backed off further. Clearly he did not know we were back there. It is tough for anyone to understand what running high speed in the dust is like until you have been there. Had I crept up through that dust to the point where I could pass or even figure out what vehicle it was, that guy would have been dead had he gone down. All is well that ends well, but I will tell you that it left an impression on me. We won that race, but the day would have ended completely different had I run that guy over.

Like Jeff, I have dreamed of running Baja on a bike since I started riding when I was a little kid. I have been fortunate enough to race down there for a few years now in the truck and I would not trade those experiences for the world. I was asked to run a leg of the 500 on a bike this year. It was only due to experience that I declined. The only way to know that a truck is behind you is to hear or feel it. The only way that is going to happen is if they get close and you look back. If they get close and you go down, you are dead. The only time I seem to crash is when I take my eyes off the road and look backwards to see if anyone is back there. Bums me out because Baja is such a cool place. I think it would be fantastic to experience it on a bike.

One more story. Henderson Fabtech classic a couple years ago. I was stuck behind buggy #1 and buggy #2 was stuck behind me. We are doing about 50-60 through a silty whoop section. Buggy #2 finally got fed up and went way wide through the desert. Buggy #1 in front of me let us both by once he saw we were back there. The guy that went through the bushes was all over the place once he got back on course and I was right behind him. I backed off a little because I was worried he was going to wreck just trying to outrun me. In the silt, you either want to be on the guys ass (like 1-10 feet away) or a hundred yards back because you are blind. I was backing off and suddenly I see buggy #2 flipped over on his side, in the middle of the course, with his roof towards us. Brad yelled, I swerved off and just missed him. We stopped and Lovell called BITD while I ran back to see if the guy was OK. Together with another truck that stopped we flipped him back over. The roof was smashed in so he could not get out. He was pretty beat up and out of it, but he could get himself to the next pit. To this day, I doubt that guy knows how close he came to death that day. I am pretty sure that my 4,000lb+ truck to the roof of his single seat buggy would not have been much of a fight.

Point is, it doesn't just happen to bikes.

Excellent post Torch! Gives great perspective of what it's really like out there.
If Pirate had rep points, they'd be headed your way, haha.

Solution coming I hear? Maybe I will get my chance to run Baja on a bike after all. Looking forward to details!

Glad i just read all this, i got a possiable invite for the 1000 on a bike this morning, im thinking twice now.
:beer: to those who took time to write/type this