A New Challenge, A New Adventure

On Nov 18-19 I did something with my friends that was bold, high adventure, and exciting.  I decided to have a race car (a UTV) built for racing the Baja 1000, and 5 friends to be on my team.

Long-time subscribers know that the Baja 1000 is the longest off-road race in the world, and I had entered it five times; once as a team with my son n a motorcycle (we won our class in 2015), and five times in a row solo on a motorcycle.  Doing it solo is perhaps the most physically demanding feat in all of motorsports.  I finished twice, but only once in the time limit. 

Two weeks after last years race I had my knee replaced.  I could not train this year due to a knee getting better so I could not race a motorcycle in the Baja 1000, though I was on a 3-man team for the Baja 400 in September and did very well.  The 1000 is a whole different animal.

I had never raced four wheels before.  If I wanted to race the 1000, four wheels promised to be far easier physically, and would not hurt my knee.  In April I made the decision.  I found the best guy to build a race machine.  We started out with a stock Honda Talon, 1000cc, four seats, and transformed it to an able race machine.

The roll cage was reinforced, the suspension completely redone, bigger wheels, removed the rear seats to ut a big gas tank in, doors welded shut, radios and Lowrance GPS installed, racing seats with five point harnesses, removable steering wheel, fire supression system, and on and on.

My goal was to make great memories with friends with an adventure we’d never forget and just finish the race.  UTV’s can break on the rugged Baja terrain, and our goal was to not break ours and just finish.  The course this year was the second-longest in Baja 1000 history – 1226 miles.  A big challenge.

My team were my friends Kevin Koval from Albany NY area, Tony Hafford from southern Maine, Todd Lutinski from the Boston area, Victor Abitia from Tijuana area and my significant other Marie who would ride as navigator when I was driving.

I had never driven a race car like this and didn’t know how, so I wormed my way into the passenger seat with Jamie Campbell in the Vegas to Reno race this summer.  It was a rude awakening.  Riding in the passenger seat is scary.  You keep saying in your helmet “You got this right?….RIGHT???  Then you get motion sickness and want to puke.  Even the pros do.  (So I recruited Marie to do this for me! lol) (Wow that sounds bad…keep reading).

After months of preparation, we met to prerun the course.  We had a different machine to pre-run, since you don;t want to beat up your race car just before the race. The distance is like riding off-road from New York to Miami.  It FAR.  It took four days to get there when we pre ran it.  In the process, a rim split when Victor and Tony were driving, and a steering tie rod came off when Todd and Kevin were in it.  We persisted and got all the way back to the starting line to make preparations for the start of the race.  Marie joined us then.

We went through registration and tech inspection, and did all the things we needed to do to prepare.  We had three chase trucks – a bigger chase crew than normal for four wheels.  I was in it now.  I came to appreciate the simplicity of racing a motorcycle.

I was supposed to start the race on the 500x motorcycle team at 2 am, race 65 miles for that team, and get a ride back to the starting line to get our race car in staging at 8:30 am.  It turned out the 500x team recruited a total of 7 riders and were not short-handed anymore, so I did not start for them.  Good thing.  The race time limit was 50 hours and I needed all the sleep I could get before it started.

I was at the starting line with Marie, finally waiting for the 30 seconds since the car ahead of us launched into the race, for our light to turn green.

That’s when it all really started….