Throw back to my first Baja 500 Race Report
What in the world would make a grown man pee his pants and sit in those pee pants all day you ask ?
A practical joke?
A weak Bladder?
A few Bucks from a bet?
Hell No ……
But, to be an off road racer you will have do what it takes. You know.. because risking your life is not enough. Racing thru silt beds when you can’t see your hand in front of your face is not enough. Driving down dirt roads at high rates of speed not knowing what’s around the next corner or over the next Mountain, is not enough. You will stop at NOTHING. Nothing means anything to beat your competition to the finish line by any means necessary.
And why do we do this you ask?
That is a good question. There is no Pile of Money for you at the Finish Line. There is not your favorite meal waiting for you at the Finish Line. There is however a Lady that was nice enough to stay up and do an interview with you and hand you a couple of hats and a couple of Medals all the while she insults your Race car and calls it a cute little golf cart thingy.
Let me tell you a little more of the story of Team UTVinc. We decided we wanted to do some off road racing. So we entered our first race a couple of months ago and had a blast. The race was thr Silver State 300 and we finished the race in 7th place. We had learned a lot during this virgin run as we had never done this before. We quickly learned the most famous lesson of all: everything that could go wrong, does go wrong. Hell, we had never done this before. We learned a lot and figured we would try our hands at the Baja 500. This course is 500 miles of the most brutal dirt roads that in my mind should not even been called roads.
Anyway back to the pee pants… most Men wear an external catheter thingy that, lol, is installed like a condom and has a sticky glue that seals to keeps it on your, well you know. Anyway that is what it is supposed to do. So when you got to go you just let ‘er rip and it runs out a rubber hose that you run down your pants leg. Well now, that’s the plan ok, so now you all understand how a guy can drive an off road race machine for 8 hours without stopping for more the a few minutes for gas.
Team UTVinc plans to spend thousands of dollars as well as months of planning to prepare for the Score International Baja 500. We show up to the Baja 500, acting like we’re the future winners with it in the bag. That is just the competitive nature of humans I think. Do we do it all just for a pat on the back from our peers? Hell, I don’t know but we do it and come back for more.
The morning of the race we are afraid to eat. We also do not want a bunch of food in our bellies before we tackle the most grueling 500 miles of desert at around 11AM. Oh, did I mention we are in Mexico? Did I also mention that my hotel faces a street that has a non-stop party going on? It has bell,s sirens and blasting music coming from all directions. My hotel room wall must have be made of cardboard as it was echoing in my room louder than if I was standing in the mist of the party. Sleep is not in the books tonight. Anyhow, they start the race with a car off the starting line every 30 seconds. We roll up to the starting line waiting for the flag to drop. Waiting, waiting, waiting, GO! We are off and running, we come in to the third turn off the streets of Mexico that leads down to the canal. Our little fast tires screeching and screaming. We almost do not make the corner. Woooo!! Ok a ¼ mile or so down the canal they have built a nice jump, but we have never jumped it, so we don’t know what to expect. We were talking about hitting it at 40mph, but we didn’t have any crowds watching us at that time. The crowds of cheering people seem to make you do things you normally wouldn’t do. LOL. We hit that friend going 65mph and soared through the air! We land and all was well. We take off into the desert and we pass a couple of racers early on. We are doing great around mile 40 or so before we blew a corner and end up laying the UTV on its side. The awesome people from the crowd ran over and flipped us upright. We didn’t even have to get out of the car. We just started it back up and got back in the race, thanks to all those awesome people who helped us out!
It’s funny, but nothing mattered at this point. Not the huge bumps, rocks, dust, heat, death, nothing, not one thing. You’re at mile 40 or so and your mind is so busy scanning, planning, attacking and holding on for dear life you can’t even swallow. Your mouth is dry, it’s hard to reach your camelback but even if you could, you can’t take your hands or mind off the road. Not even for a second. Your buddy in the passenger seat is yelling out directions from the white line on your GPS screen. The line bends and turns he trying to interpret the line and feed you information the best he can, but he can’t see all of the rocks, boulders, cliffs, and drop-offs that this wonderful course has laid out in front of you.
So back to racing; We are doing good we think but around mile 60, boooommm!! I think WTF was that? We pull over and, oh ****, flat tire. We change it out with the spare we have and while we are parked a few racers get around us. Damn, now we are few spots down from where we were.
We pull onto the road we have to cross as we know we have planned a pit stop ahead. Gas, water and for the guys to look over the car. Everything goes well and we are off to the next 80 mile section. This section runs down the coast, “hell ya”. I think a drove on this road a week before and was able haul ass. Well, I am wrong. You see we started after about 200 other racers. The road is now covered with rocks that they have chewed up. It is not quite the same as when I preran the course. We are still doing well, and slowly catching others that had passed us during the tire change. We now think we are in 3rd place but really do not have a clue as time differences and every car looks to be the same.
Next thing you know there is the helicopter flying next to you filming. I tell my co driver ‘Damn, I told them not to follow me. I have a little problem when the heli gets around me. I don’t want to look slow so I go FASTER!’. LOL, ya I know, grow up show off. We get down to our next pit stop at around mile 160. Our chase truck is not around, uh oh. We try call on the 2 way radios that are kind of worthless and get no reply. Really? Really? I am trying to race here! We make the decision to drive to town and get in line at the Pemex Gas Station. Now, I am thinking I got to pee; remember the catheter thing I told you about? I just relax and pee but something doesn’t feel right.. oh damn, oh ****! The catheter came off, and you know just as well as I do what just happened.
So, we pull into the gas station and my co driver gets out and tells the lady ‘fill ‘er up’. I start taking off my fire suit so I can see what is going on. I got my underwear under my junk, I am half naked and reaching down my pant leg trying to find the hose all the while the gas station lady is standing right next to me trying to figure out what the I failed high school are these crazy white guys doing? My co-pilot, ill just tell you now cause I skirted around it a few times already, well his nickname is BONER. LOL, I know. I yell ‘Boner, lets go!!!” He gives the lady a $100.00 and gets back in the car. I never did find the hose so im fuc*** and my ass is already wet.
We drive back to the place we left the race course and we are back to racing again. We know we have lost a lot of time. We finally hear from our truck that he was stuck in traffic 30 or so miles out. Now this is where it gets fun. The race course turns from a foot to 3 feet deep, powdered dirt. There are dozens of cars waiting in line to get up these crazy silt trails. Every time a racecar goes up them they churn up a dust cloud. So thick you can’t even see your steering wheel! Now, once I get up this hill there is a race buggy stopped and trying to get up the next section. He cannot make it up the second hill. We are racing now, but there is no way this guy is going to make it. Now I am all in at this point, pee pants and all, so I pulled my, as the race announce lady called it ‘cute little golf cart’, up to this guys rear bumper and when he hit the gas, I hit the gas and pushed him far enough up the trail that I could skirt around him
Yap, there is more. We have about 60 miles to go and I start thinking again.. Really? Really? You guys are joking, what did you guys do with the race course? Where did you put it? This can’t be it, this is the Highway to Hell. I just had the **** beat out of me for 200 plus miles and this is what I had to look forward to? It is now O’ dark thirty but we plunge on all in at this point. Darkness with rocks, boulders, cliffs, and even a dead cow in the middle of the road, darkness.
Our next pit stop is at mile 260ish. We pull in after having the **** beat out of us and I am thinking why? Why? Why? This **** is brutal, we get out of the car for a driver and co dog change. In the process of looking over the car we find a bad uniball, or to those of you that don’t know, a bad part that will cause the car not to finish that last 160 miles. So the team starts working on it with some help from the pit crew and owner of Lonestar racing. I am semi dead at this point, and don’t really give a **** what happens. Except that I get out of this race fire suit and into some dry pants. LOL. We lost about 45 minutes more with that pit stop but we are still in 3rd place. Brian took over the driving and Craig took over Boners Job not real sure what happened after that, but we finished in 4th place!
That night, at around 3 am I went to bed thinking to myself; Why? Why did we do this? The next morning when I awoke, I was thinking ‘I wonder what the Baja 1000 is going to be like?’, we better start planning.
Thank you for all the support from the forum members, Facebook members, Instagram likers, Twitter tweeters and all our friends and family for reading these posts, and encouraging us to push our little golf cart to these extreme limits. All the companies who help make these projects what they are, our hats are off to you. Thank you as always to Joey, UTV Underground and the Mad Media crew for all the support and race coverage. Rigid Industries, thank you for keeping us running through the dead cow darkness. Lone Star Racing, Method Race Wheels, XTC Motorsports, BFGoodrich Tires, Fox Shox, Polaris Industries for building a machine to tackle the 500 miles of the worst terrain we have ever seen, and all you other wonderful people we are forgetting at the moment. Sorry, my brain is still a little shaken but not stirred from the race!
Here is to the next one!!
