UROC National Champion - Tracy Jordan Defies Death at SCORE Baja 1000

[desertbull]

Here's the story from Tracy and a DIRTnewz Photos of the crash site in the daylight---Yikes!

Here

[fnbuggy]

Glad he's okay. Thanks for the story. If you read this Tracy, get well soon and good luck in Phoenix.

[Whitewater]

Some better pictures of the accident
http://www.race-dezert.com/forum/showthread.php?t=24068

[WOBBLEWAGON]

I am the crew chief of this unfortunate accident that happened in the mountains just outside of Loredo, Baja California. I recieved this yesterday via email of the accident in Kenny Bartrum's words of what happened. I have spoken to all the drivers but Tracie Jordan. All seem to be all right, but rattled up. All seem to be extatic about next years 1000 and possibly some races prior including CORR series and BITD races. I hope Tracey joins us up and coming. This is a bit long but it is Kenny Bartrums story of what happened and he was the one driving when the car went off the cliff.

Where to start, I guess it all started back in August, right after I
had my huge crash at X Games. I was just returning home from that, and
got a call from BFGoodrich asking if I wanted to drive a Wide Open
buggy in the Baja 1000. I said I had to check with Dunlop (my
motorcycle tire sponsor), but it was okay with them, I’d love to.
Over
the next couple of months, BFG and Wide Open Tours worked incredibly
hard to organize the entire outing for our team. Mike Metzger, Bud
Brutsman (producer for TV show Overhaulin’), Tracy Jordan (rock
crawling champion), and myself were to be the 4 drivers.

Tracy and Bud both had some Baja driving experience from years past,
while Metz and I were the 2 newbies on the team. I went down and pre
ran one day before the race, but it wasn’t even my section, so it was
more to get used to the car than anything. Which by the way, those cars
are amazing what they will take. When I first got in, I was all over
the course dodging little rocks and such, then I got in and co-drove
for Kevin from KMC wheels, and he was scaring the crap out of me the
stuff he would just pin it right into…but you would barely feel it,
so
I started to relax. You can take a 3 foot section of whoops, a TV sized
boulder, or a rain rut the size of a motorcycle, and just run right
across the things.

The BFGoodrich tires and suspension just soak it right up. Absolutely
amazing

So, after months of preparation from BFG and Wide Open (Wide Open is a
company that rents car for tours throughout the year, and then rents
them to people for the Baja 1000 race) it’s race day.

Tracy and I were supposed to drive the 2nd half of the race. So we get
up about 6am Thursday morning to head off to the airport in Ensenada.
Catch an 8:30am flight to San Ignacio, where the pilot does some stunt
flying into the runway. You know how most commercial flights you are
lined up and straight with the runway a few miles out. This was a small
non commercial flight; well the pilot does a fly by the airport (to
check there are no new holes in the runway because this airport is just
a runway, no building). Then after doing his flyby the pilot does a 360
degree right turn, we are still finishing our turn as the right wheels
of the plane touch the ground the left wheels are still a few feet off
the ground. Somehow he pulls it off, and the entire plane (all 6
people) give a little sigh of relief.

Tracy and I take a taxi to a little hotel called the Rice and Beans
hotel where we catch up with more BFG people. We hop in their car and
ride about 30 miles up the road to the BFG pit #4, which is at race
mile 517.66. Tracy and I would hang out here for about 18 hours
awaiting our car and anxiously checking on the news of how Bud and Mike
were doing.

Radio contact was almost nil, but there were a few people with
scanners, so we listened in and gathered what we could. Mike and Bud
left the starting line about 12:30pm Thursday with Bud driving and Mike
co-driving. They were doing good at first, our team was BC-3. Baja
Challenge car and the 3rd car on the road. In the 1st hundred miles
they had caught n passed one of the cars ahead of them and were passing
lots of cars in other classes that had taken off before them. Then
something happened with a shock collar, they stopped and spacered it
out with washers on the trail and limped it into the BFG pit #1. About
2 hours later, we got news they left that pit. Then we heard they ran
out of gas before Pit #2 and had to be towed in. We found out later
that at some point they stripped out 2 stub axles, not sure how they
got those fixed or where at on the course. If all had gone well, Tracy
and I should have gotten in the car about 10:30pm Thur night.

5 am Friday morning, we get a radio transmission Mike and Bud are 5
miles out of Pit 4. So, Tracy and I start getting ready to take over.
Tracy is driving 1st, after about 30 miles of pavement; I missed a turn
on the navigation which cost us about 15 minutes. Then within 10 miles
of being on dirt, Tracy hit a rock going through a water crossing and
flatted the left rear tire. For some reason the right rear wouldn’t
pull the car along and the left rear was just a spinning rim at that
point. So we changed that tire on the race course. We went about 5
miles and he flatted the right tire, pulled off the course and we
changed that one. About an hour later there was a car broken down in
the road, Tracy tried to go around it, but picked a bad line and we
sunk up to the frame in mud. I could reach out my window and touch the
mud. Luckily there was a tow truck there for the other car, and they
pulled us right out about 10 minutes later. Then about 10 miles after
BFG pit #5 the car just sputtered and died. Tracy and I spent a good
hour diagnosing things ourselves. It was getting fuel to the injectors,
but we couldn’t find spark anywhere. So, a series of mechanics came
from the pit, we changed out coils, coil wires, ECU’s, spark plug
wires, fuses, and anything else we could think of. After about 6 hours
and a completely new wiring harness (which was for a different model of
car) and a lot of jerry rigging we were back under way. About 10 miles
before BFG pit 6, Tracy over shot a turn and beached us up on a rock
(imagine that the rock crawler had us stuck on a rock, lol). It took
about an hour for him to walk back up the trail, help a trophy truck
get unstuck, and then for them to pull us out. In the mean time I had a
fire going and was getting prepared to spend the night in the desert.
Once we got the car off the rock, it wouldn’t start. It took us about
30 minutes to figure out that we were almost out of gas, and when the
car would go down a hill the pick ups at the back of the tank would
suck in air. We would have to unhook the fuel line, pump some gas
through sort of re priming the fuel system, then hook the line back up.
The car fired up and we were finally headed for pit 6. It would run out
of gas about 5 more times in the next 10 miles where we finally got the
system down to jump out, bleed the fuel line and be back in the car
going within about 5 minutes. We finally get to pit 6 about 9pm Friday
night.

We swap drivers and it’s finally my turn. While at the pit we make
sure
the car gets a full tank of gas this time (which as it turned out we
wouldn’t need) and take off. We take off from the BFG pit #6 at race
mile 776.82 saying we should have been done with the race about 9 hours
ago. We are definitely not going to win our class, let’s just drive
to
the finish not pushing the car or anything, just finish, just finish.

Okay we all agreed.

About 12.5 miles from that pit, I made a comment to Tracy who is now
co-driving for me, that I’m sorry I’m driving like such a pansy,
but I
can see a cliff on the left side. That’s okay he said we’re just
here
to finish at this point. Then right about 13 miles from the pit, mile
789 he called a right 180. I started turning right, the front end
started pushing, the turn started tightening, and the road started to
narrow. Before I know it, the left front tire is going off the edge of
the road. I thought no big deal, it should stop here and we’ll just
back up and keep going…once the left front went the car kept going
and
the left rear slid off the side of the hill.

At this point, we have no idea how far down the hillside/cliff/whatever
you want to call it goes. It’s about 9:30pm so it’s pitch black
out,
except for the lights that are shining the direction the car is
pointed, and there is no longer a road in front of us. We can feel it
starting to roll over. I screamed the entire time, “keep your hands
in,
keep your hands in”. Tracy later said he counted 3 rolls before
getting
knocked out (he came back to at the bottom). It took us about 10
seconds to finally reach the bottom. I’ve rolled 2 other cars over
and
barely felt a thing, this was the most violent car wreck I’d ever
been
in (but it was sort of fun in a weird way). When the car stopped at the
bottom of the canyon, it was driver’s side up. I looked down at Tracy
in his seat, and it had his arm pinned between the seat and the body
work. I asked, “Are you okay?” He said, “I can’t move my arms,
I’m
stuck, I can’t feel my arms, get me out of here I smell gas.” I
just
about freaked out at that point, but I knew that wouldn’t do any
good.
So, I unbuckled and got out of the car. Once I unbuckled Tracy’s seat
belt he fell to the side which released his arm, and luckily he was
able to get out on his own. I crawled back in and got the fire
extinguisher just in case. Tracy was pretty delirious for a few hours
afterwards, even a few days later he still didn’t act the same.

At that point, we were both somewhat okay though, and just had to
figure out how the heck to get out of this canyon.

As we turned around and looked at what we had just come down, we
realized we were about 300 feet below the road surface. Luckily we
hadn’t gone off 50 feet earlier in the turn though, it was an
inverted
cliff there, we wouldn’t have had the same results for sure. We both
tried to flip our car back over to its wheels, so our radio antenna
would be pointed up.

We couldn’t do it though.

So, we grabbed the Sat phone, some flashlights, and flares and started
on what was about a 10 minute rock climb out of this canyon. Luckily
the next car on the road was a friend of Tracy’s and they stopped to
help us out and stayed with us til help arrived. In the mean time I
climbed back down to the car to search for our driver’s bags that
were
in what used to be the hood of the car. Tracy’s bag was about 100
feet
down the wash, my bag was under the car, and there was stuff scattered
the entire way down the hillside (along with the rocks and trees we
took out on our way down and the 5” trianchula I just about stepped
on). Our bags had our passport and wallet in them, so I wasn’t about
to
leave without those. At one point Tracy and I stood at the top of the
cliff looking down and just asked ourselves, how did we just live
through that; a thank you God prayer was said shortly after that
question.

It was quite a long cold wait, but help finally showed up about 1:30am.
We left that area and went back down to pit 6, which took forever,
because we were in a stock street truck going about 2mph and Tracy was
still about to throw up so we kept stopping. We made it to the pit
about 2:30am, changed out of our wet driving suits, and left there
about 3am and drove on the highway in a passenger van. Bud had rented
it for his Chase crew he brought with him to chase us around the race
course. We ended up getting to the hotel in La Paz about 8am Saturday
morning, remember we left 6am Thursday morning…I was soo happy to see
a
shower and a bed!

At this point, the Baja 1000 was over for us. All that was left was the
awards on Sunday. We were accepted well by the entire Baja community
though. I think our team is famous as the car that rolled 6 times off
the 300 ft cliff by the San Javier Mission. Even the lady at the
airport ticket counter knew of us. Just about everyone with Baja had
heard of us. And the most common response was, Oh My God that was you
guys. And you’re still alive to tell about it.

All in all, it was a great trip to Mexico. I heard of another BC car
that got submerged in about 15 feet of water, both driver and co-driver
made it out okay. But they went scuba diving to hook up the chain to
pull the car out of the water. I heard my buddy Travis rolled his car
on a high speed whoop section and it caught fire. Shortly after he and
his co-driver were pulled from the car by locals, it was engulfed in
flames…there’s not much left of his car. Speaking of cars, Wide
Open
sent someone at first light around 5:30 am to watch our car, and by the
time they got there, the locals had stripped it completely. Radio, GPS,
wheels, tires, tools, everything was gone. They said all there was is a
frame a motor, and seats. Pretty crazy how in the middle of nowhere
Mexico between 1:30am and 5:30am they can still figure out how to strip
a car down. Later in the day, Wide Open showed up with a winch with a
150 ft cable to get our car out. They said it didn’t even go halfway
down the hill. They went and found a tow truck with a 500 foot chain to
pull our car out of the canyon.

To my entire team, I’m really really sorry I wrecked our car. Tracy,
I
hope your head is feeling better and you can finally turn your neck.
Thank you to BFGoodrich for inviting me on this trip and Wide Open for
letting us drive (destroy) your car. To all the guys that helped us out
soo much, Todd, Jeff, Lela, Ben, Captain, Joel, SpongeBob, Matt,
Hector, Jime, Bruce, Jim, Parker, Justin, and everyone else, sorry I
ruined it for us…next year we’re gonna win this sucker!

[Whitewater]

Thanks for posting this, that's a great writeup!

[JW]

Originally Posted by Whitewater

Thanks for posting this, that's a great writeup!

Seriously, very cool!

JW