Destination: La Paz : Those Who Try the Baja 1000 Off-Road Race From Ensenada Find That It’s More Than Just Getting From Point A to Point B
Ivan Stewart had some advice for the record 331 entries who would run the 25th Tecate/SCORE Baja 1000 off-road race from Ensenada to La Paz last week, and youngsters were wise to listen. Stewart, 47, has been doing this as long as there has been dirt.
Every third year the race is run to La Paz, rather than on a course looping out and into Ensenada.
“Just try to get to La Paz,” Stewart said. “To try to race to La Paz, unless you have a lot of experience and have really good equipment and very good pits, you aren’t going to make it. You’re going to get lost, you’re going to hit trees, you’re going to get tired, stuck. . . . The fog, the lagoons, the silt are going to get you, the night’s going to get you, you’re going to hit a cow. Just drive and you’ll get to La Paz--or maybe you still won’t get there.”
Alas, even Stewart didn’t make it--his engine blew after only three of the 13 checkpoints--but neither did 38% of the others who attempted the 1,032.7 miles under a variety of conditions--all bad--and a full Mexican moon.
As ever in this evento clasico of off-road racing, there was everything from back yard buggies scraped together on shoestrings to multimillion-dollar, fully sponsored programs with enough technology to put a man on the moon--but not necessarily in La Paz.
Roger Mears’ megabuck team failed to reach a checkpoint. But brothers Hector and Luis Sarabia, last-minute entries from Ensenada, got their VW Baja Bug all the way, even if it did take 41 hours 34 minutes. They were the last finishers, 26 minutes before the cutoff time. Kawasaki rider Garth Sweetland of Phoenix was the first and fastest finisher in 16:50:15, sharing the ride with Danny Hamel and Paul Ostbo.
But the best way to do it was with the Rough Riders, a confederation of teams with six trucks in different classes, all sponsored by Ford and B.F. Goodrich, who combined their considerable talent and resources under the direction of Frank DeAngelo to overcome the complex logistics of the Baja. While most of the other competitors tuned into the “weatherman” on the general race channel, the Rough Riders used their own pit and communications network linked to an airplane orbiting over the peninsula to monitor their progress.
Along the way they had nine refueling pits and 11 “check” pits to handle minor problems. Five major pits were set up around semi-trailer rigs--essentially mobile shops. There also were 38 chase vehicles to resupply tires or deliver parts to a racer broken down on the course. It involved 202 people, and it paid off.
The Rough Riders placed first, second, fourth, fifth and ninth overall among four-wheel vehicles, winning five classes, and all six of their entries finished--even if it did take relief driver Jack Johnson nearly 25 1/2 hours to limp home with the Ford Ranger that Parnelli Jones rolled over a bank between San Felipe and El Arco.
Brothers David and Paul Simon of Fallbrook, driving a Ford F-150 in unlimited Class 1, averaged 61.165 m.p.h. and passed all but five of the motorcycles, which started 2 1/2 hours earlier and usually run faster than the trucks. Their time of 16:53:02 was only 2 minutes 47 seconds slower than the leading Kawasaki.
Generally, especially at night with their batteries of lights, overtaking trucks terrorized the bikers.
“Everyone on bikes is afraid of trucks,” Kawasaki rider Chris Keaverly said.
Paul Simon said, “When we turned on the lights they probably thought they were being followed by a baseball stadium.”
Rob MacCachren of Las Vegas, second overall among four-wheelers, won Class 8 in a slightly less-modified F-150. John Swift, Oxnard, fourth overall, won Class 6 in a Ford Explorer. David Ashley, San Bernardino, fifth overall, won Class 4 in an F-150. And Dan Smith, Riverside, ninth overall, won Class 3 in a Ford Bronco.
Stewart’s son Brian broke up a top-four sweep by placing third overall in a Dodge D-150.
The silver anniversary Baja 1000 had a record 331 entries--including 131 motorcycles--and 307 starters, each of whom had a tale to tell afterward. But one of the best ways to follow the race was to ride with the Rough Riders.
The racers start at 30-second intervals, beginning with motorcycles at 6 a.m. At the pre-race drivers’ meeting, SCORE President Sal Fish tells competitors to observe a 40-m.p.h. speed limit and obey all policemen and traffic lights until passing the third stoplight outside Ensenada.
Uh-huh.
At 9:55 a.m., Ashley, code name “Race 4,” reports by radio that the locals are “digging some holes about five miles outside Uruapan (in the early part of the course). . . . It looks like it’s booby-trapped.”
The local residents are playful, especially in the north. They like to move course markers around.
But all goes smoothly through the morning. Jimmy Buffet is singing “Margaritaville” on Madeline Bullman’s media chase truck tape deck. The sky is clear. Then, at 12:47 p.m., Jones radios that a transmission cooler is leaking.
The pit at San Felipe, eager to be ready when Jones arrived, asks: “What size wrenches? Is the dipstick under the hood? . . . OK, that helps us a lot.”
Later, Jim Hoover in the airplane reports, “704 (Jones) is through San Felipe and they’ve taken care of the problem.”
But Jones’ biggest problems are ahead.
Sweetland broke a shoulder while prerunning the course three days before the race.
“I took a day off, loaded up with Advil and gritted it out,” he said. “Everything went well in the race, except when I hit a coyote and it jerked the handlebars out of my hands.”
By midafternoon the Rough Riders are overtaking rivals who started in front of them.
“Team Simon, you’re running four minutes behind (’89 winner) Robbie Gordon,” Hoover reports. “Race 7 (Jones), there have been no other 7s at Gonzaga Bay except you. . . . Race 6 (Swift) is 22 minutes up at Coco’s Corner.”
But Smith and then Ashley can’t restart their engines after refueling at Bahia de los Angeles.
“We need two starters at Bay of L.A.”
“Beat it with a hammer,” someone suggests.
The chase trucks move, but before they get there crews have taken starters off other chase trucks and sent Smith and Ashley on their way.
Then Jones rolls his truck. Co-rider Jack Murphy says later that they rolled twice and landed on the wheels with the engine running, but got stuck three times trying to get back on the road. After making temporary repairs, they had to drive 90 miles at 10 m.p.h. to El Arco, where they welded the front end back together.
Ostbo said he hit a horse near El Progreso:
“It jumped out onto the trail. I went over the handlebars and hit the horse in the rear. I landed back on the bike.”
After dark, a Mexican immigration agent is checking cars for fruit on the main highway at the border between Baja Sur and Baja Norte. The Rough Rider media truck pulls up.
“We have Medflies,” the agent says. “You got a (team) T-shirt for me?”
He is wearing a California Department of Fish and Game cap. He now has a blue Rough Riders cap.
Jon Snyder of Thousand Oaks and Lance Magin of Reno finished second in Class 4. The two paraplegics drove a Dodge W-150 once owned by the veteran Rod Hall, who was third.
Paul Simon finishes at 1:31 a.m., cruising the last miles past the roadside bonfires to a tumultuous welcome by thousands at the finish line outside La Paz.
“That was beautiful,” he says. “I never expected to see so many people.”
But others are warned to get their vehicles out of the finishing area quickly. The locals are collecting souvenirs--even peeling the decals off the cars.
“This is the toughest race,” Paul Simon says. “It’s so long, and there are people on the roads. It’s their roads and they’re still using them. If a farmer’s cow is sick and he has to take it to the vet, he loads it in the truck and goes.”
Kawasaki team manager Mark Johnson was reprimanded for slugging Honda rider Dan Ashcraft as they rode alongside each other after the race. Ashcraft’s co-rider, Dave Donatoni, had alleged that Kawasaki official James de Gaines had altered the course markings.
Fish warned against such incidents in the future.
The race also requires luck, but the Rough Riders made most of their own with preparation and coordination.
MacCachren said: “The pits and the radio communications really help. You can radio ahead to find out what tide conditions are down on the beach, radio back to let other people know.”
Swift: “If you’ve got problems, you can get it fixed faster and get back on the road.”
Ashley: “It’s the most organized deal out here. The other teams don’t get you in and out of the pits nearly as fast our crews do.”
David Simon: “This type of racing is when it starts paying off.”
And there is no type of racing quite like the Baja.