Ten miles after Kevin and Dustin got in the car, the left rear wheel fell off – or was broken off. When the wheel came off the axle dragged in the dirt and rocks, and ruined it, and the hub and caliper.
In a crisis, communication is the key to understanding what is going on and what to do about it. They were in the desert 50 miles from us. Darkness dropped on the landscape. At that point, we didn’t have a complete list of all the parts they would need. We looked for what we had in the chase truck we were at. We had the axle – the left rear one! We had the nut! We had a caliper! Wow! Thanks to Jamie and Chris who prepared.
Now how to get it to them? We decided to take the prerunner that was on the trailer. We loaded the parts in and Victor and Jason McVikar got in it and drove towards the race mile they reported they were at to find them.
Jason is from British Columbia. He has the distinction of being the human being who has crashed at the highest speed and lived to tell about it. He crashed a motorcycle at 240 miles an hour. You can look it up on YouTube. There is a graphic video of the crash. Unbelievable. Jason is a great mechanic and we were happy to have him on our chase team.
Time went by. We waited for another message or call on the Sattellite phone. When we got it, it said they needed another part. We were losing a lot of time. We figured out we had the other part but it was in another truck that was 50 miles away and we had no communication with that truck in the location they were at. So we drove, and hoped he was there.
He was. He had the part. Meanwhile the four guys out on course made an executive decision not to wait, and to take the part off the prerunner to fix the race car. They got going in the race car, and Kevin got a $100 cab ride from a local ten miles back to the road, got the part, and got a ride back to the stranded prerunner. They fixed it and drove out to the truck, loaded it up and caught back up with us at Race Mile 211.
We had some bad luck, but some good luck in getting it fixed. We lost four hours. Now the pressure to race the other guys was off. We just needed to drive smooth and fast and finish.
Victor and Dustin took the car through the infamous San Felipe whoops – 50 miles of waves in the sandy cobbled desert floor.
We raced down the highway in the darkness to meet them at mile 279.
The stars in Baja sky were magnificent and all part of the beauty and danger that is the Baja 1000.
WOW!! There are SO many facets of success in this entry that they’re hard to break down in this space!!
The first us obviously Leadership, both natural and gained through effort and experience (nurtured), to assemble the Team for:
– Poise, confidence, and clarity of thought and purpose in a crisis
– Accurate assessment of damage and materials needed by the race team
– Clear, correct comms back to the chase team
– Understanding of conditions and assessment of capabilities by the chase team
– Preparedness, equipment knowledge, and anticipation of weak points in packing spare parts (hero behind the scenes)
– Mental and logistical agility by the repair team AND the race team in using the part ‘on hand’ in the pre-runner (tear down TWO vehicles in the desert in the dark!) to get the race team going
– Willingness (sacrifice) by repair team to be stranded at night in the desert waiting for the part from the second truck to get there while the race team proceeded towards the common goal
– Dedication and tenacity by ALL to get the race team going and then go back and recover the repair team
It goes on… but this short passage is almost a tutorial in ‘management of a crisis’ vice ‘crisis management’.
Great stuff, Larry!! For all the aspects cited above, this could be THE story of the race!
Thanks again for sharing!
Thank You for making these posts. So Great to hear the story! Always an amazing time in Baja! We need “Into The Dust 5 – The UTV Files” to become a reality!