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Baja 1000

cds36

cds36

NAXJA Forum User
Location
San Bernardino Ca
What a freakin weekend, time of my life. First off thanks to Tony for letting me ride along man had the time of my life honestly. Congrads to Baja 4 Racing those guys are all class acts and there hospitality was very gracious. Also thanks to Andy for the IRc updates for a while you were our only communication on where they were. After well over 500 miles of chasing and no sleep in id say 25-29 hours, having lunch with Perry McNeil it just dosent get any better than the baja 1000. After suffering a broke rack and pinion and roll which put us back atleast 7 hours we finished 13th, But the more important thing is we finished !!!

Heres just a few of the pics

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Also a Big congrads to
  1. Mike Shaffer, Lanee Clifford
  2. Jason LaFortune/Lance
  3. Scott Watkins
Mike and lanee suffered from a blow trans and broke front axle but managed to come in first 3yrs in a row now.
 
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crazyjim said:
Awesome man! I was watching the race as well online. Andy and I were arm chair quarterbacking and speculating on what we thought was happening :laugh:

Being scared of Mexico aside... I think I'll go to Baja next year.
Click to expand...

Yeah I herd storys before but we had not one problem and the people were awesome I have nothing bad to say about mexico. But plan to gain about 25 pounds the freaking tacos, arent like here in cali the el pastor was the freakin shizznit. OMG
 
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We stayed in San Felipe all week,the weather and town were great.Started 9th in 1600 and finished 3rd.We had four flats and no rear brakes from mm220 on.Preran in the XJ all week about 500 miles and just one flat.This is it's 3rd 1000 in a row,preran to Cabo last year and La Paz in 06.Anyhow great times and not one problem with the jeep.
 
First off, a huge thanks to Craig for riding co-dawg with me, like a good co-dawg, never once heard a complaint, moan or groan out of him, regardless of the fact we went for about 40 hours straight with no sleep, and he didnt speak spanish so it made it hard for him to understand some times...still, was like a champ all weekend.

Also a huge thanks to Andy, who ran Computer QBack for us sending me IRC updates vi blackberry and messenger to keep us posted.

Here is a quick summary:
We chased (Chase alone) a total of 502 miles staring Friday at 11:30am through Saturday at 2:30 when we finished.

Total of 19 cars started, we finished 13th, dead last (only because two other guys that came in behind us exceeded the time limit!)

We had an intersting race. We were hauling the mail all the way through RM 249. We were anywhere from 6-10 minutes off the leader the entire first 200 miles. At RM 250 we lost our rack and pinion. Earlier, we felt our front torsion bars started going, which may have been the cause of the R&P failure. We had about 2.5 hours of downtime finding a spare rack (someone let us borrow their spare, only in Baja!!) and then another 3 hours to get it to the car and get it installed. From there, it was fast and smooth sailing through the night, we had anticipated a slower pace, since we were now in it to finish and not to win since we were so behind, but the driver was pushing it hard! At RM 480more or less, he decided to do a quick roll. He nailed a rock on the inner corner of the car, taking a turn to tight, and it plopped them over 1.5 turns, leave it to the spectators to get him back on the wheels, and we lost an antenna, and maybe 3-4 minutes, the car was still doing great! From there, he was on it again, clocking times of 90-102 miles per hour (out of a car with 90 hp guys!)

From there, we really started to haul the mail and picked off two more class 16 cars which ended up not finishing. It was a long 27 hours, but a unforgetable experience. For those of you curious.....winner barely pulled 50 mph average (previous years average was something like 62 or 65), which goes to show you how tough the course was. We also had the winner of the 16 class manage to finish top 20 OVERALL!!! Awesome was these little 1700 lb cars can do!

Thanks to all that helped!! Curt, as always, glad to see you down there ( I see Curt more in baja than in the US now!!)
 
First off congrats to team B4R for finishing!! Considering this years course just to finish is quite an accomplishment. To finish is to conquer Baja and hats off to the team for it took a team effort to attempt this race.
It was great to see Tony and Craig. And like Craig said ..... the tacos......mmmmmmm awesome!!! Glad you got a chance to experience the adventure Craig.
I helped with a class 8, Regulators Racing team. We were leading the points for the season but had to finish strong to win the season. The truck looked great but started to run rough and stall out while it was being driven to tech on Thursday. So the carb was rebuilt in the parking lot of a Pemex station (you gotta love Baja racing). The truck ran great after the carb work. On Friday we started 4th in class 8 with 7 entries. I was positioned at race mile 55 on the Compadre trail. Watched the trophy trucks, class 1's, class 10's and 11's go by and was excited the 8's were getting close. As the first 2 class 8 trucks went by I heard on the race radio our truck was at rm 42 and running strong with no problems. The truck passed in about 6th place in class 8 so we had dropped 2 positions...not a good start. As they went by the driver pointed at me and the co-driver gave an acknowledging thumbs up. My co-dawg and I opened a beer and toasted to the truck passing us. Our work was done for the next 8 hours. Or so we thought!!
5 minutes later I hear on the race radio "Curt to got a copy?". Followed by something about the truck started to run rough then backfired and died around race mile 65 (so much for the premature celebration). This section of the Compadre trail had a fence on one side and bushes and trees on the other with no access roads. Quickly I realized this meant I had to drive ON the course...DURING the race...with half the field still behind me. Man what an experience that was!!!! Class 7's flying by me along with Hummers and class 1's and many others (thank god I have a yellow visibility light on back). So I'm driving like a bat outta hell on the course thru silt and a couple skull and crossbones areas. The Baja XJ did great and when we arrived the driver said wow you made it here fast. He was rewiring the ignition when we arrived and the engine fired right up and sounded strong. So the driver and co-driver got in and my co-dawg and I put the glass back on, gave them some bottled water and gatorade and hooked up the air and sound to their helmets. They asked us to follow for a couple miles to make sure everything was good. So it was back on the course again. They pulled ahead and called from race mile 70 saying it was OK for me to stop. But I needed to hang for an hour in case more help was needed. I heard nothing more from the race truck. So we watched all the racers go by then drove out on the course, meeting a couples racers head on.
My next position was race mile 520 so I headed back to Ensenada for some tacos and maybe some rest. Later I called a buddy in the states watching the IRC tracking and learned the truck was only at race mile 120 and this was 3 hours later. I later learned they had more carb problems and had to rebuild the carb again at rm 120. So it was time to drink a bunch of coffee and keep smoking as I waiting for more news of their progress. Around 2 am I learned the truck was stopped at rm 170 and had been stopped for awhile. Around 3:30 am I reached the nearest chase vehicle and found out the fuel pump had gone out and with other problems we were out of the race. The nearest chase vehicle had to drive on the course thru silt 2 feet deep and wasn't set up to pull them. The prerunner had to come with the trailer from Ensenada to rescue the race truck. I heard it arrived at 8am so the driver and co-driver had been in the truck for 20 hours with no food or water for the final 16 hours or so.
So much for a strong showing at this years 1000. Damn!!!!!
But the experience was a blast!!! This was my first time actually chasing with a team in Baja and I was stoked to be called into action.
Here are a couple pics with more to come...









 
Fuckin a Curt was my first time at the baja let alone chasing for a team, im watching dust to glory right now and getting goose bumps man cant wait till next year !!!!
 
Oh yes, it is an addiciton!!

Sorry to hear about the luck curt. Driving on the course is a serious adreneline rush!!! Gotta love it
 
I've chased and pitted the 1k and the 500 before and it is an experience. Lots of action and no sleep! Great pics guys and glad everyone made it home safe, maybe next time we'll have a So Cal NAXJA road trip.
 
Here are a few more pics that my co-dawg took.
The first one is some guy that thinks he is a race car driver admiring my XJ. :)
You can see the reflection of my Baja XJ on the side of his freshly waxed Monster chase truck.







Gee I wonder what he was focusing on for this picture :)


Here is a link to all the Baja 1000 pics we took for those that are interested (and yes there are a couple more of the girl)
http://flickr.com/photos/bajacurt/sets/72157609873063068/
 
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