gunn
4th Gear Poster
- Joined
- Sep 22, 2023
- Messages
- 248
- Location
- SF , CA
- Vehicle Details
- 95 T-bird with 5.0and m5r2 swap for lemons
Five Years after last campaigning a Production class UTV in the 2019 Mexican 1000, my friends and I went back for the 2024 Mexican 1000 this past week. You folks might remember this old thread https://www.tccoa.com/threads/lesso...dcat-xx-utvs-in-the-2019-mexican-1000.189137/ so I figured I might share a bit about what happened with us this time.
Since my friend's brother in law was waiting on his next baja vehicle, he was willing to help us prep our mothballed Wildcat XX and let us borrow his baja bus + trailer. He drove, his friend our chief mechanic came along, and we had a blast with only one vehicle being raced.
- With me working on my day job and my EV conversion and my co-owner drone racing and living in Costa Rica, we didn't mess much with this vehicle before this race: Carl rebuilt our driven/drive clutch, broke in a stack of belts for us to swap daily, and replaced the original v1 axles with the improved design from Robby Gordon (SPEED). We got a pair of handmedown Shock Therapy springs/shocks from Dick's old Wildcat XX but they were setup for a vehicle slightly heavier than our own.
- At the race and before tech, I wiped her down with some wipes ("whore bath" style), added power for a Garmin INREACH (to enable SMS comms from the car to our chase team), stuck on some googly eyes, and we called it a day. We figured if it was good enough for 2019, it'll hang in 2024. It was... but just barely.
So fresh and so clean
Such a pretty light bar. Not long for this world.
- The course has gotten LONGER (1300mi vs ~1100mi in SF) with the addition of a 6th day of racing and this year, the race director highlighted that they made it was more difficult to keep things interesting. The 6th day came as a bit of a surprise to me (I only found out at the driver's mtg) but the days tended to be shorter (300ish miles max vs a 400mi slog) and "it was like getting 20% more racing for "free." What we didn't realize until we started though was that the course would include MORE trails with "whoops" (trails with small hills that go up and down repeatedly), a giant sand hill, and a lot more ROUGH terrain.
On the bright side, our UTV WAS faster b/c of the revalved shocks (previously we just ran the stock Fox shocks with heavier springs):
- In 2019, we were limited to 20mph over "whoops" because if our suspension hit full extension, the axle boots would hit the body and RIP axle. On the dry lakebeds, we could hit 70MPH+ but not for a sustained amount of time b/c of heat issues with our CV belt (transmits power from the engine to the diffs).
- In 2024, we had a new 3rd driver (my good friend Sloan who never even even raced in Lemons with us) but Brett and I learned quickly we could push the car a good deal harder than 5 years ago. While adding a 3rd driver allowed us to take a break most days, things got spicy for us as we became (over) confident.
While rock gardens would still slow us down a bit while we picked the best trail, our suspension let us pass a lot of much larger, more powerful vehicles in these areas as we could more easily dodge obstacles. The gorgeous Safari Porsches someone ran this race could pass us on some straight trails but didn't have the suspension travel to hange with us on the broken terrain of washes (dried rivers) and other nastier bits. The heavier vehicles also suffered in sand traps.
* On rough terrain, we'd do 50MPH+ whereas previosuly we'd max out around 35MPH.
* On flat stuff, we could sustain 72-72MPH until the heat started creeping up and I think at top speed we hit 80MPH. We improved belt cooling from prior years so our limitation was really our engine's cooling system (at a sustained 9200RPM, those three hamsters are dumping a LOT of heat into the radiator).
- Logistically, this race got a LOT harder. In addition to our crew chief Dick, our "angry santa" garage troll Carl as chief mechanic, Dick's son and his son's buddy Fish all riding in the Dick's short bus converted into a Baja Bus RV, we also had my co-worker Larry and Kathy running chase with their stock 2014 4Runner. In several instances, one or both chase crews had to set off before the UTV race vehicle started the stage just to get in position to refuel us. Figuring out where to meet us and how to get there
- Starlink has really changed baja racing. While we had Garmin INREACH units as a secondary tracker and SMS comms system (seperate from the NORRA supplied Stella system which just communicates racecar positions, emergency messages, and pass requests/confirmations to the NORRA organizers), we also had a Starlink setup on the baja bus so they could follow our vehicle. What's crazy is that fancier teams now have Starlink onboard their race vehicles to stream video which you can see recordings of here:
www.youtube.com
As in 2019, RF radios are still pretty damned useless (esp if you break the antenna off -- more on that later).
DAY 1 (Ensenada to San Felipe): The day we rolled the car twice
The first special stage (SS1) coming out of Ensenada to San Felipe was suprisingly challenging: there were more ruts and dips than I remembered vs initial dusty roads into whoops. 15 minutes into the stage, I was the first to roll our vehicle. Brett called it a stop and roll and I fully admit it was my issue as I touched the brakes when the UTV slid around instead of hitting the gas and pulling us out. At a mere 1MPH, we went sideways, hit a rut, and did a full rollover. The UTV engine kept running, landed on our tires, and when we drove 20ft to be checked out by a crowd of folks, they gave us our roof light, used a bungee to strap my driver's door shut, and sent us off with a 5 min delay. I was a little shook up but learned how the vehicle handled over the next stage since it was much stiffer than previously.
Brett took over with Sloan as co-driver for SS2. He was booking it, got Sloan up to speed on what was expected from him (after we refreshed things between ourselves on SS1), and then blew off a coolant hose smack dab in the middle of a dry lakebed 13 miles from the nearest highway (approx 20mi from the finish). The obvious culprit: too many revs.
The chase crew and I started gameplanning how to get our UTV rescued: we saw them move for a bit and them stop again and concluded that we needed to contact the race directors to ask how to get one of the sweep teams to drag them out of the playa (since neither of our chase vehicles could make it there). During our call, when we told them we needed their help, they responded "huh, Stella tells us your vehicle is now moving at 68MPH down the course."
It turns out that Sloan and Brett had reconnected the hose and filled the car with the emergency water (and camelbak water) they carried on board. When they moved it 200ft, they had in advertantly burped the system so when they filled the reservoir, it was gametime again.
DAY 1 LESSON LEARNED
It turns out that there's a special nipple that's accessible ABOVE the engine and under the cute plastic basin that holds our spare tire. This is a race vehicle so that crap has got to go before we race again.
Later in the week, we learned about the rules changes. Relocating the radiator to above the engine and behind the passenger compartment will increase cooling AND streamline the air bleeding process.
We were elated and ready to crack some beers but 15 minutes out, almost at the end of the special stage, we got a final INREACH message from the team: come get us. We are on the hwy but we broke the UTV.
Apparently, Sloan had called out the next waypoint, a jump, and Brett decided to go full send like he was in Nitro circus or something. This was the result (captured by some specators that were setup in this position JUST to catch some dumbasses like us).
- While we did have spare parts on the Baja bus + trailer, we were NOT prepared with a full suspension replacement (which I do have for my lemons tbird, BTW) especially on Day 1.
- They were bruised after landing upside down and were totally shook up. The front bumper taking a huge amount of the impact (wonderful design by our angry santa) but the two biggest issues were a rear shock busted in half AND a totally bent rear trailing arm.
DAY 1 MORE LESSONS LEARNED
1) If you are in the air, esp when you have time to contemplate your consequences, move your thumbs to the side of the wheel (not wrapped around it). Hell, let go and yell "take the wheel Jesus" since noone is steering in the air anyway.
2) Bring more spares.
3) Keep an eye on the random bits. Someone ran off with Brett's gloves and the door skin off the driver's side (exposing the additional shielding Carl put in for our first race). Some kid probably has our plastic green door skin hanging in his bedroom in baja.
Upon seeing the car, we thought we were done. My chase driver Larry though has been coming to Baja since short pants were fashionable so he called the local he knew in San Felipe who ran the condo we stayed at.
- I went to check with other teams but noone had any replacement shocks (they don't expect to do this either). The one guy who HAD spares, Robby Gordon, primarily because he brought FIFTEEN of his new Speed UTVs (his own design taking into account lessons learned when he helped Polaris develop the RZR and Textron develop the ArtiCat WildCat XX), had rear shocks but his suspension were too wide to fit the narrow body of our Wildcat XX.
- Larry's buddy Kerry pulled out a miracle: it turns out that there's a Textron dealer who splits his time between Oregon and San Felipe and had a pair of rear King Shock Assemblies in his garage. He had a friend pull them out of his garage and drive them over to meet us at the local ARCO station at 9PM in his Ford Raptor. Totally not shady at all.
- Even more amazingly, Kerry knew a guy who fixed a friends previous racecar in a prior race. Chava and his two sons worked all night doing a transmission swap on another competitors car but still had time to cut, gusset, and reweld our rear trailing arm. Replacing the busted axle was no big deal b/c after the first race, I think we had 5 spares. Half our team and the bus hung out at the shop while the other half and the other two drivers slept for a few hours at the condo. We actually met Chava on a transit leg the next day when refueling. He swung by in his El Camino'd Jeep Cherokee, we gave him a thumbs up, and we parted ways.
- God bless the gringo expats and their contact network. A good number of cars DNF'd on the first day and never made it back into the race.
DAY1 EVEN MORE LESSONS LEARNED
1) Bring more spare parts. We ran out of known gringo expats for all cities south of San Felipe
2) Our doors were taped shut because the rollovers bungled both door latches. I'm OK with entering the car Bo and Luke style but we could make them a little lower and with nascar bars like our lemons car. Also, I want Nascar bars for further protection (just like our lemons car).
DAY 2 (San Felipe to Bahia Los Angeles): The day Sloan learned how to race the UTV AND GET STUCK
- We got the vehicle ready to claim a starting time by 8:30AM. We were placed at the end of the pack of vehicles in our class b/c of our f-up and we also took a penalty for not completing SS2 (basically 2x the expected finish time).
- We also learned that the only other asian I had met so far (in tech inspection) failed to show up to race on Day 2. At that point, I figured I was alone in a sea of white folks and latinos.
- Having received excellent lessons on what not to do from Brett and me on day 1, the only drama Sloan encountered was that because our suspension was not setup at all (Chava basically just threw them on) so the car had a significant Carolina Squat look and would wallow under full suspension compression.
- This cause extra trouble when we hit a sand hill. Having never watched any of those crazy "Saudis trying to climb dunes" on youtube, Sloan didn't realize that if you feel your car digging in, you need to quickly throw the vehicle into reverse and back the hell down. Instead, he kept his foot down, we got stuck, and were stuck good.
- Sloan and I then spent 30 hot minutes reinacting Dune and dug ourselves out before the sweep truck took pity on us and yanked us out.
DAY 2 LESSONS LEARNED
- Besides the backing down part, we should have hit the sand hill MUCH faster (like with 2x more runway) to make it up. We got stuck 10-12ft short of the crest.
- Even smarter, we saw a half dozen other cars waiting to hit the hill. We should have watched them for a bit first.
- Also, we should bring sand ladders and maybe a shovel. Most all big vehicles have them but we never packed any b/c we never got stuck in any sand traps (even at 2000LBs, its still pretty lightweight).
- Jokes about being from SF aside, the only other eventful part of the day was Sloans 5 miles of whoops where we bottomed out on every hit. THIS POUNDED OUR ASSES HARD. FOR. 5+. MILES. I was a bit worried about the shocks not taking the abuse even if we realized that the axles were holding up. This meant that at best we could hit 18-19MPH and really drug his average speed down. In hindsight, this constant pounding probably shook something loose in our comms system (more on this later).
- Five years ago, Bay of LA was where we had to change our belts and axles during a sandstorm. I actually packed my keffiyeh again just in case but the weather cooperated and our hotel was surprisingly scorpion free (this time).
DAY 3 (Bay of LA to San Ignacio): The day we fought the car
- These new-to-us King coilovers allowed us to setup ride height and compression. They had springs for a stock Wildcat XX so were setup for a vehicle approx 200-300LBs lighter. Our fronts were from Dick's modified Wildcat so were for a car even heavier so combination made handling "exciting."
- One of our crew is a big man (former Olympic downhill skier and built kind of like a 5/8th sized Mountain). He lifted up our rear end to a better ride height (not actually that hard, I could do it, but I wanted to throw a shout out to Fish) and Dick/Carl set the vehicle up to be more level while also jacking the shock compression up to the max setting.
- The result of this stiffening was that we could handle whoops faster but at speed (68MPH on the straight rough bits and 72+ on the lakebed stuff), the UTVs rear end was doing its best to come around and kill us.
- I don't remember much of these stints except there was silt, sand, cactus, and rocks. Lots of rocks. We all fought to make up time and got our average speeds up but the constant corrections b/c of the twitch rear end wore us all out. On the bright side, over the same size/density of whoops, we could now double the speeds of Day 2 (~40MPH).
- To make things even more challenging, our audio cable started fritzing out so our intercoms didn't work. In addition to the paper logbook and the Magellan fishfinder repurposed into a baja GPS, we also had a LeadNav app running on an iphone to call out directions. Unfortunately, I couldn't track down a replacement from another team and until we figured out which cable had some issues, we had at least one stint where the co-driver was just ballast (the driver had to listen to LeadNav and glance at the iphone but more advanced directions -- i.e. the severity of each corner or "see that rock" -- couldn't be called out).
DAY 3 LESSON LEARNED
- Bring spare comms cables
DAY 4 (San Ignacio to Loreto): We finally got things dialed in handling-wise but had to deal with a 180mi single special stage.
We ended up helping pull Mad Max Gordon (Robby's son) out of a sand trap when the bronco who was helping him UP the hill got stuck as well. They didn't give us our time back (not a medical emergency) but it didn't take long and may be we can get a discount on our upgrades?
- By softening the compression and raising the ride height a little more (so it was actually a little raked down), we created a more stable vehicle. Handling was as good as it was going to get with "too soft" rear springs until we rebuild this UTV.
- We also realized that while we started at the back of the pack on Day 2 (ahead of the DNF'd guys like James the "other Asian"), we were only minutes behind the #3 vehicle, a brand new and even more bone stock Yamaha YXZ. It was cute, tiny, slow, but didn't break.
- The biggest challenge of Day 4 was that our range was maybe 110-120mi b/c our stock fuel tank only held 10gal. Looking at the rules that morning, we realized that mods previously prohibited in "stock class" five years ago were now allowed: dealer installed wider control arms to increase stability, an aftermarket fuel cell to enable >10gal of fuel onboard, and radiator relocation & upgrades (to increase heat soak capacity). Yeah we have a shopping list for the next race.
- This day was also our biggest challenge logistics-wise. Our stock 4Runner chase had to drive 5+ hours down hwys plus another 30 mi down a dirt road w/ rock garden sections that were basically identical to our race stages just to deliver us fuel. Larry and Kathy were real troopers but they had to air down their tires and some of the drive was done at 5MPH (whereas our UTV could do it in 20mi plus).
- The refuel point was at the edge of our range and if I didn't happen to hit a rock at 50MPH about 60 miles in, we might have actually beaten them to the planned meeting point. Instead, they got to see the trophy trucks and heavy metal drive by at race speeds while my buddy and I learned how to swap a tie rod at the edge of the desert course without getting run over.
Thanksfully, our garage troll worked his magic again and left us with exactly every single wrench we needed to make the swap.
DAY 4 LESSONS LEARNED
1) Don't hit rocks at speed or shit breaks
2) While our jack system was pretty trick (basically an L shape you place under the side bars and use to lift the entire side of the car up using a quick hand crank) and stored behind the driver, it was a real bear to remove if you had your doors taped shut. We ended up pulling out just the vertical part and jacked the UTV up with the pogo stick jack sitting on a rock instead of its proper metal base.
Oh, stumbling back from the evening's party, we found this creepy baby head. On a whim, we decided to take it down to Cabo with us. Between the beat to hell UTV w/ the googly eyes and baby head, the short bus w/ the giant cactus wrap, and of course the crash vid, we were definitely "noticeable" in the field. Folks were coming up to us at the bars and in the starting lineup to tell us they'd seen our crash and were amazed we were still around.
DAY 5 (Loreto to La Paz)
- We were closing in on #3 Yamaha and had lowered the delta to within minutes.
- DAY 5 was spent chasing them down, passing on some rocky stuff where our longer suspension was an advantage, and then trying to put as much distance as we could between us in the higher speed sections. They had one hot shoe (and one who wasn't as much) and the hot shoe definitely gave us a run for our money on some of the tight sections where we didn't have as much of an advantage. Leads were traded several times and it was all in good fun.
- One other exciting development was a protest had shut down one of the transit sections. As we came up in the transit section to a completely blocked off part of the hwy , my codriver spotted a Class 11 (oldie VW bug with stock suspension) weaving in and out of the cars/people on the combination berm/shoulder/"frontage road". He quickly yelled at me to "follow that car" which quickly turned into a madcap chase (still following the Stella mandated/monitored speed limits but clearly taking liberties with anything resembling US traffic laws). The guy must have been an experienced local b/c after we both got to the stage on time (there's a required minimum/maximum transit time you need to hit before the next stage), we also had a pretty fun dogfight on the special stage as he was quite tenacious on the shitty road segments before eventually yielding the lead to us when the rough terrain overwhelmed his suspension.
- Another issue came up was that because of the protest, we had beaten all our chase cars to the planned driver swap/refueling point and only had 8 minutes before we needed to enter the next special stage (or lose time). Here's where being social helped: I found another team refueling and asked to buy 5 gallons off their chase vehicle so we could make our time. They were happy to do so and were overjoyed to hear at the awards dinner how this saved our bacon.
Biggest downside: NORRA neutralized this entire special stage b/c not every competitor could pull off what we did. That's racing, I guess.
DAY 6 (La Paz to Cabo)
- This day was one of the shortest but still quite exciting. We managed to put 9 minutes between us and the #6 car and even luckier, the second place in class car (which was as modded as the car in 1st place in our class) DNF'd after Day 4 and never showed up to race on Day 5. This meant that they suffered enough penalties that we started Day 6 in Second place (not just 3rd as we had originally hoped).
- We just had to finish the race without punching ourselves in the dick again and we would not only podium but win second in class (just like in 2019 -- only with more steps). As we were going to roll into the queue to start, I found myself strapped in without keys to the UTV. Turns out someone had grabbed the keys and forgot to tell us. Thankfully, Carl had thought of everything (yet again) and pointed us to where a spare was stashed. No time was lost.
- Five years ago, I got hit with such a bad case of food poisoning (from ceviche) that I was nearly comatose when my friend drove himself (and my useless carcass) across the finish. This time, I was determined to be both coherent and in the car when we crossed the finish line 150mi later. I was willing to let Sloan and Brett both drive the special stages while I co-drived the entire day.
- Since everyone has a slightly different timed start, if the Yamaha caught up with us, they started far enough behind us that we would have lost even if they never passed us on course. Both guys drove fast, had some pitched battles with other cars (where we'd trade the leads), and we ended up finishing in 2nd place in Production N/A UTV class, 80th overall out of 161 cars that started. Only 117 cars out of 180 finished though so even that is an accomplishment.
Not so pretty anymore. Headed back to Boise for a rebuild
SUMMARY
Racing in Baja isn't the safest thing I've ever done but its a pretty fun and unique motorsports experience (more than driving a fancy car around a track).
- The logistical challenges and prep is something that can be constantly optimized. You can solve this problem with money (Robby Gordon has 15 or 25 customer vehicles he ran support for and I believe the cost for one race is equal to what his vehicles run -- approx $40K). Five years ago, another company did the same with Polaris vehicles ($20-25K, same price as the RZR).There are groups you can hire for a few thousand to handle your fuel logistics all the way down the Penninsula (Mag7 will carry your spare parts AND setup refueling stops for $800 + $200/stop). No matter how you deal with the issue, almost every team needs support.
The only team that I saw soloing it were the folks from GoWesty. They competed unrivaled in the "RV class", had all their spares in the back of their Westfalia camper van, and ran the race purely for the joy of it. We used to race against them in Lemons so it was always fun to see those guys out.
- Like lemons racing, you cannot win a race in any one corner but you can certainly lose a race. If you want to finish, you should really only drive as far as you can see. This means lifting off the throttle as you crest a hill so you can eyeball what dangers might lie ahead. However, if you want to be competitive, you also have to push it sometimes especially if you are chasing down a car to pass them and move up the rankings. Even though the Mexican 1000 is "non-contact" (unlike the Baja 1000) since you can signal your intent to pass and receive acknowledgement through Stella, not everyone listens and not everyone is willing to give up their position. If you signal for a pass (press the blue button) when you see them, lots of drivers (ourslves included) will just floor it and "rabbit away". Instead, you often have to charge right into the dust cloud of their wake, accepting the reduced visibility of the road ahead (sometimes down to 20 or so feet), watch for imminent danger like ruts, and trust your co-driver to call out the next turn so you can anticipate when to steer once you start seeing the road bend in a direction. If you are right up someone's ass when your co-driver signals for a pass and you are honking your horn, they have much less of an excuse for not moving off the racing line and letting you pass. It's a blast.
SIDE NOTE
There are hardly any asians in this sport. I wish there was more diversity here. Except for this other asian I met during tech who had competed in the Mexican 1000 before on bikes and was racing a UTV for the first time, I didn't meet any other asians until the closing awards dinner. Unfortunately James DNF'd on the first day, didn't start day 2 so I never saw him again. Even Vail ski resort had more diversity (also, a place to find rich mexicans).
At the awards ceremony, I finally met two other asian racers (so I was one of three, just like in 2019)
- Lex builds M3 conversions of E46 wagons. He was in Open UTV, blew up his transmission, swapped it, and then proceeded to kill his engine over the course of 6 days He did manage to finish 116th out of 117 and says he'll be back. It was fun to see him and his whole family (brother, kids, wife, and mom) along with his token white guy co-driver. It was like the inverse of my team.
- Dan was a younger guy who actually worked for Ford Motorsports. I was happy to hear that they finished 1st in their class (Heavy Metal) and 5th overall but of course, their approximate budget for this race (the number he threw out) easily exceeded my lifetime motorsports budget for both Brett and me the last 15 years plus my entire EV conversion project (which is already into Plaid EV money). I was willing to concede that HE was the fastest asian at the 2024 Mexican 1000... until the told me that they didn't actually let him drive.
I then promptly reclaimed the title of #chinomasrapido
PS. We should also get some professional photos and drone clips so I'll add them whenever we get the package
Since my friend's brother in law was waiting on his next baja vehicle, he was willing to help us prep our mothballed Wildcat XX and let us borrow his baja bus + trailer. He drove, his friend our chief mechanic came along, and we had a blast with only one vehicle being raced.
- With me working on my day job and my EV conversion and my co-owner drone racing and living in Costa Rica, we didn't mess much with this vehicle before this race: Carl rebuilt our driven/drive clutch, broke in a stack of belts for us to swap daily, and replaced the original v1 axles with the improved design from Robby Gordon (SPEED). We got a pair of handmedown Shock Therapy springs/shocks from Dick's old Wildcat XX but they were setup for a vehicle slightly heavier than our own.
- At the race and before tech, I wiped her down with some wipes ("whore bath" style), added power for a Garmin INREACH (to enable SMS comms from the car to our chase team), stuck on some googly eyes, and we called it a day. We figured if it was good enough for 2019, it'll hang in 2024. It was... but just barely.
So fresh and so clean
Such a pretty light bar. Not long for this world.
- The course has gotten LONGER (1300mi vs ~1100mi in SF) with the addition of a 6th day of racing and this year, the race director highlighted that they made it was more difficult to keep things interesting. The 6th day came as a bit of a surprise to me (I only found out at the driver's mtg) but the days tended to be shorter (300ish miles max vs a 400mi slog) and "it was like getting 20% more racing for "free." What we didn't realize until we started though was that the course would include MORE trails with "whoops" (trails with small hills that go up and down repeatedly), a giant sand hill, and a lot more ROUGH terrain.
On the bright side, our UTV WAS faster b/c of the revalved shocks (previously we just ran the stock Fox shocks with heavier springs):
- In 2019, we were limited to 20mph over "whoops" because if our suspension hit full extension, the axle boots would hit the body and RIP axle. On the dry lakebeds, we could hit 70MPH+ but not for a sustained amount of time b/c of heat issues with our CV belt (transmits power from the engine to the diffs).
- In 2024, we had a new 3rd driver (my good friend Sloan who never even even raced in Lemons with us) but Brett and I learned quickly we could push the car a good deal harder than 5 years ago. While adding a 3rd driver allowed us to take a break most days, things got spicy for us as we became (over) confident.
While rock gardens would still slow us down a bit while we picked the best trail, our suspension let us pass a lot of much larger, more powerful vehicles in these areas as we could more easily dodge obstacles. The gorgeous Safari Porsches someone ran this race could pass us on some straight trails but didn't have the suspension travel to hange with us on the broken terrain of washes (dried rivers) and other nastier bits. The heavier vehicles also suffered in sand traps.
* On rough terrain, we'd do 50MPH+ whereas previosuly we'd max out around 35MPH.
* On flat stuff, we could sustain 72-72MPH until the heat started creeping up and I think at top speed we hit 80MPH. We improved belt cooling from prior years so our limitation was really our engine's cooling system (at a sustained 9200RPM, those three hamsters are dumping a LOT of heat into the radiator).
- Logistically, this race got a LOT harder. In addition to our crew chief Dick, our "angry santa" garage troll Carl as chief mechanic, Dick's son and his son's buddy Fish all riding in the Dick's short bus converted into a Baja Bus RV, we also had my co-worker Larry and Kathy running chase with their stock 2014 4Runner. In several instances, one or both chase crews had to set off before the UTV race vehicle started the stage just to get in position to refuel us. Figuring out where to meet us and how to get there
- Starlink has really changed baja racing. While we had Garmin INREACH units as a secondary tracker and SMS comms system (seperate from the NORRA supplied Stella system which just communicates racecar positions, emergency messages, and pass requests/confirmations to the NORRA organizers), we also had a Starlink setup on the baja bus so they could follow our vehicle. What's crazy is that fancier teams now have Starlink onboard their race vehicles to stream video which you can see recordings of here:
NORRA
No other racing event immerses competitors in the food, drink, culture, and beauty of Baja, Mexico, like the Yokohama Tire NORRA Mexican 1000 presented by Method Race Wheel – “The Happiest Race On Earth!”. The competitors run the gamut, from offroad racing icons to current stars, adventure...
www.youtube.com
As in 2019, RF radios are still pretty damned useless (esp if you break the antenna off -- more on that later).
DAY 1 (Ensenada to San Felipe): The day we rolled the car twice
The first special stage (SS1) coming out of Ensenada to San Felipe was suprisingly challenging: there were more ruts and dips than I remembered vs initial dusty roads into whoops. 15 minutes into the stage, I was the first to roll our vehicle. Brett called it a stop and roll and I fully admit it was my issue as I touched the brakes when the UTV slid around instead of hitting the gas and pulling us out. At a mere 1MPH, we went sideways, hit a rut, and did a full rollover. The UTV engine kept running, landed on our tires, and when we drove 20ft to be checked out by a crowd of folks, they gave us our roof light, used a bungee to strap my driver's door shut, and sent us off with a 5 min delay. I was a little shook up but learned how the vehicle handled over the next stage since it was much stiffer than previously.
Brett took over with Sloan as co-driver for SS2. He was booking it, got Sloan up to speed on what was expected from him (after we refreshed things between ourselves on SS1), and then blew off a coolant hose smack dab in the middle of a dry lakebed 13 miles from the nearest highway (approx 20mi from the finish). The obvious culprit: too many revs.
The chase crew and I started gameplanning how to get our UTV rescued: we saw them move for a bit and them stop again and concluded that we needed to contact the race directors to ask how to get one of the sweep teams to drag them out of the playa (since neither of our chase vehicles could make it there). During our call, when we told them we needed their help, they responded "huh, Stella tells us your vehicle is now moving at 68MPH down the course."
It turns out that Sloan and Brett had reconnected the hose and filled the car with the emergency water (and camelbak water) they carried on board. When they moved it 200ft, they had in advertantly burped the system so when they filled the reservoir, it was gametime again.
DAY 1 LESSON LEARNED
It turns out that there's a special nipple that's accessible ABOVE the engine and under the cute plastic basin that holds our spare tire. This is a race vehicle so that crap has got to go before we race again.
Later in the week, we learned about the rules changes. Relocating the radiator to above the engine and behind the passenger compartment will increase cooling AND streamline the air bleeding process.
We were elated and ready to crack some beers but 15 minutes out, almost at the end of the special stage, we got a final INREACH message from the team: come get us. We are on the hwy but we broke the UTV.
Apparently, Sloan had called out the next waypoint, a jump, and Brett decided to go full send like he was in Nitro circus or something. This was the result (captured by some specators that were setup in this position JUST to catch some dumbasses like us).
- While we did have spare parts on the Baja bus + trailer, we were NOT prepared with a full suspension replacement (which I do have for my lemons tbird, BTW) especially on Day 1.
- They were bruised after landing upside down and were totally shook up. The front bumper taking a huge amount of the impact (wonderful design by our angry santa) but the two biggest issues were a rear shock busted in half AND a totally bent rear trailing arm.
DAY 1 MORE LESSONS LEARNED
1) If you are in the air, esp when you have time to contemplate your consequences, move your thumbs to the side of the wheel (not wrapped around it). Hell, let go and yell "take the wheel Jesus" since noone is steering in the air anyway.
2) Bring more spares.
3) Keep an eye on the random bits. Someone ran off with Brett's gloves and the door skin off the driver's side (exposing the additional shielding Carl put in for our first race). Some kid probably has our plastic green door skin hanging in his bedroom in baja.
Upon seeing the car, we thought we were done. My chase driver Larry though has been coming to Baja since short pants were fashionable so he called the local he knew in San Felipe who ran the condo we stayed at.
- I went to check with other teams but noone had any replacement shocks (they don't expect to do this either). The one guy who HAD spares, Robby Gordon, primarily because he brought FIFTEEN of his new Speed UTVs (his own design taking into account lessons learned when he helped Polaris develop the RZR and Textron develop the ArtiCat WildCat XX), had rear shocks but his suspension were too wide to fit the narrow body of our Wildcat XX.
- Larry's buddy Kerry pulled out a miracle: it turns out that there's a Textron dealer who splits his time between Oregon and San Felipe and had a pair of rear King Shock Assemblies in his garage. He had a friend pull them out of his garage and drive them over to meet us at the local ARCO station at 9PM in his Ford Raptor. Totally not shady at all.
- Even more amazingly, Kerry knew a guy who fixed a friends previous racecar in a prior race. Chava and his two sons worked all night doing a transmission swap on another competitors car but still had time to cut, gusset, and reweld our rear trailing arm. Replacing the busted axle was no big deal b/c after the first race, I think we had 5 spares. Half our team and the bus hung out at the shop while the other half and the other two drivers slept for a few hours at the condo. We actually met Chava on a transit leg the next day when refueling. He swung by in his El Camino'd Jeep Cherokee, we gave him a thumbs up, and we parted ways.
- God bless the gringo expats and their contact network. A good number of cars DNF'd on the first day and never made it back into the race.
DAY1 EVEN MORE LESSONS LEARNED
1) Bring more spare parts. We ran out of known gringo expats for all cities south of San Felipe
2) Our doors were taped shut because the rollovers bungled both door latches. I'm OK with entering the car Bo and Luke style but we could make them a little lower and with nascar bars like our lemons car. Also, I want Nascar bars for further protection (just like our lemons car).
DAY 2 (San Felipe to Bahia Los Angeles): The day Sloan learned how to race the UTV AND GET STUCK
- We got the vehicle ready to claim a starting time by 8:30AM. We were placed at the end of the pack of vehicles in our class b/c of our f-up and we also took a penalty for not completing SS2 (basically 2x the expected finish time).
- We also learned that the only other asian I had met so far (in tech inspection) failed to show up to race on Day 2. At that point, I figured I was alone in a sea of white folks and latinos.
- Having received excellent lessons on what not to do from Brett and me on day 1, the only drama Sloan encountered was that because our suspension was not setup at all (Chava basically just threw them on) so the car had a significant Carolina Squat look and would wallow under full suspension compression.
- This cause extra trouble when we hit a sand hill. Having never watched any of those crazy "Saudis trying to climb dunes" on youtube, Sloan didn't realize that if you feel your car digging in, you need to quickly throw the vehicle into reverse and back the hell down. Instead, he kept his foot down, we got stuck, and were stuck good.
- Sloan and I then spent 30 hot minutes reinacting Dune and dug ourselves out before the sweep truck took pity on us and yanked us out.
DAY 2 LESSONS LEARNED
- Besides the backing down part, we should have hit the sand hill MUCH faster (like with 2x more runway) to make it up. We got stuck 10-12ft short of the crest.
- Even smarter, we saw a half dozen other cars waiting to hit the hill. We should have watched them for a bit first.
- Also, we should bring sand ladders and maybe a shovel. Most all big vehicles have them but we never packed any b/c we never got stuck in any sand traps (even at 2000LBs, its still pretty lightweight).
- Jokes about being from SF aside, the only other eventful part of the day was Sloans 5 miles of whoops where we bottomed out on every hit. THIS POUNDED OUR ASSES HARD. FOR. 5+. MILES. I was a bit worried about the shocks not taking the abuse even if we realized that the axles were holding up. This meant that at best we could hit 18-19MPH and really drug his average speed down. In hindsight, this constant pounding probably shook something loose in our comms system (more on this later).
- Five years ago, Bay of LA was where we had to change our belts and axles during a sandstorm. I actually packed my keffiyeh again just in case but the weather cooperated and our hotel was surprisingly scorpion free (this time).
DAY 3 (Bay of LA to San Ignacio): The day we fought the car
- These new-to-us King coilovers allowed us to setup ride height and compression. They had springs for a stock Wildcat XX so were setup for a vehicle approx 200-300LBs lighter. Our fronts were from Dick's modified Wildcat so were for a car even heavier so combination made handling "exciting."
- One of our crew is a big man (former Olympic downhill skier and built kind of like a 5/8th sized Mountain). He lifted up our rear end to a better ride height (not actually that hard, I could do it, but I wanted to throw a shout out to Fish) and Dick/Carl set the vehicle up to be more level while also jacking the shock compression up to the max setting.
- The result of this stiffening was that we could handle whoops faster but at speed (68MPH on the straight rough bits and 72+ on the lakebed stuff), the UTVs rear end was doing its best to come around and kill us.
- I don't remember much of these stints except there was silt, sand, cactus, and rocks. Lots of rocks. We all fought to make up time and got our average speeds up but the constant corrections b/c of the twitch rear end wore us all out. On the bright side, over the same size/density of whoops, we could now double the speeds of Day 2 (~40MPH).
- To make things even more challenging, our audio cable started fritzing out so our intercoms didn't work. In addition to the paper logbook and the Magellan fishfinder repurposed into a baja GPS, we also had a LeadNav app running on an iphone to call out directions. Unfortunately, I couldn't track down a replacement from another team and until we figured out which cable had some issues, we had at least one stint where the co-driver was just ballast (the driver had to listen to LeadNav and glance at the iphone but more advanced directions -- i.e. the severity of each corner or "see that rock" -- couldn't be called out).
DAY 3 LESSON LEARNED
- Bring spare comms cables
DAY 4 (San Ignacio to Loreto): We finally got things dialed in handling-wise but had to deal with a 180mi single special stage.
We ended up helping pull Mad Max Gordon (Robby's son) out of a sand trap when the bronco who was helping him UP the hill got stuck as well. They didn't give us our time back (not a medical emergency) but it didn't take long and may be we can get a discount on our upgrades?
- By softening the compression and raising the ride height a little more (so it was actually a little raked down), we created a more stable vehicle. Handling was as good as it was going to get with "too soft" rear springs until we rebuild this UTV.
- We also realized that while we started at the back of the pack on Day 2 (ahead of the DNF'd guys like James the "other Asian"), we were only minutes behind the #3 vehicle, a brand new and even more bone stock Yamaha YXZ. It was cute, tiny, slow, but didn't break.
- The biggest challenge of Day 4 was that our range was maybe 110-120mi b/c our stock fuel tank only held 10gal. Looking at the rules that morning, we realized that mods previously prohibited in "stock class" five years ago were now allowed: dealer installed wider control arms to increase stability, an aftermarket fuel cell to enable >10gal of fuel onboard, and radiator relocation & upgrades (to increase heat soak capacity). Yeah we have a shopping list for the next race.
- This day was also our biggest challenge logistics-wise. Our stock 4Runner chase had to drive 5+ hours down hwys plus another 30 mi down a dirt road w/ rock garden sections that were basically identical to our race stages just to deliver us fuel. Larry and Kathy were real troopers but they had to air down their tires and some of the drive was done at 5MPH (whereas our UTV could do it in 20mi plus).
- The refuel point was at the edge of our range and if I didn't happen to hit a rock at 50MPH about 60 miles in, we might have actually beaten them to the planned meeting point. Instead, they got to see the trophy trucks and heavy metal drive by at race speeds while my buddy and I learned how to swap a tie rod at the edge of the desert course without getting run over.
Thanksfully, our garage troll worked his magic again and left us with exactly every single wrench we needed to make the swap.
DAY 4 LESSONS LEARNED
1) Don't hit rocks at speed or shit breaks
2) While our jack system was pretty trick (basically an L shape you place under the side bars and use to lift the entire side of the car up using a quick hand crank) and stored behind the driver, it was a real bear to remove if you had your doors taped shut. We ended up pulling out just the vertical part and jacked the UTV up with the pogo stick jack sitting on a rock instead of its proper metal base.
Oh, stumbling back from the evening's party, we found this creepy baby head. On a whim, we decided to take it down to Cabo with us. Between the beat to hell UTV w/ the googly eyes and baby head, the short bus w/ the giant cactus wrap, and of course the crash vid, we were definitely "noticeable" in the field. Folks were coming up to us at the bars and in the starting lineup to tell us they'd seen our crash and were amazed we were still around.
DAY 5 (Loreto to La Paz)
- We were closing in on #3 Yamaha and had lowered the delta to within minutes.
- DAY 5 was spent chasing them down, passing on some rocky stuff where our longer suspension was an advantage, and then trying to put as much distance as we could between us in the higher speed sections. They had one hot shoe (and one who wasn't as much) and the hot shoe definitely gave us a run for our money on some of the tight sections where we didn't have as much of an advantage. Leads were traded several times and it was all in good fun.
- One other exciting development was a protest had shut down one of the transit sections. As we came up in the transit section to a completely blocked off part of the hwy , my codriver spotted a Class 11 (oldie VW bug with stock suspension) weaving in and out of the cars/people on the combination berm/shoulder/"frontage road". He quickly yelled at me to "follow that car" which quickly turned into a madcap chase (still following the Stella mandated/monitored speed limits but clearly taking liberties with anything resembling US traffic laws). The guy must have been an experienced local b/c after we both got to the stage on time (there's a required minimum/maximum transit time you need to hit before the next stage), we also had a pretty fun dogfight on the special stage as he was quite tenacious on the shitty road segments before eventually yielding the lead to us when the rough terrain overwhelmed his suspension.
- Another issue came up was that because of the protest, we had beaten all our chase cars to the planned driver swap/refueling point and only had 8 minutes before we needed to enter the next special stage (or lose time). Here's where being social helped: I found another team refueling and asked to buy 5 gallons off their chase vehicle so we could make our time. They were happy to do so and were overjoyed to hear at the awards dinner how this saved our bacon.
Biggest downside: NORRA neutralized this entire special stage b/c not every competitor could pull off what we did. That's racing, I guess.
DAY 6 (La Paz to Cabo)
- This day was one of the shortest but still quite exciting. We managed to put 9 minutes between us and the #6 car and even luckier, the second place in class car (which was as modded as the car in 1st place in our class) DNF'd after Day 4 and never showed up to race on Day 5. This meant that they suffered enough penalties that we started Day 6 in Second place (not just 3rd as we had originally hoped).
- We just had to finish the race without punching ourselves in the dick again and we would not only podium but win second in class (just like in 2019 -- only with more steps). As we were going to roll into the queue to start, I found myself strapped in without keys to the UTV. Turns out someone had grabbed the keys and forgot to tell us. Thankfully, Carl had thought of everything (yet again) and pointed us to where a spare was stashed. No time was lost.
- Five years ago, I got hit with such a bad case of food poisoning (from ceviche) that I was nearly comatose when my friend drove himself (and my useless carcass) across the finish. This time, I was determined to be both coherent and in the car when we crossed the finish line 150mi later. I was willing to let Sloan and Brett both drive the special stages while I co-drived the entire day.
- Since everyone has a slightly different timed start, if the Yamaha caught up with us, they started far enough behind us that we would have lost even if they never passed us on course. Both guys drove fast, had some pitched battles with other cars (where we'd trade the leads), and we ended up finishing in 2nd place in Production N/A UTV class, 80th overall out of 161 cars that started. Only 117 cars out of 180 finished though so even that is an accomplishment.
Not so pretty anymore. Headed back to Boise for a rebuild
SUMMARY
Racing in Baja isn't the safest thing I've ever done but its a pretty fun and unique motorsports experience (more than driving a fancy car around a track).
- The logistical challenges and prep is something that can be constantly optimized. You can solve this problem with money (Robby Gordon has 15 or 25 customer vehicles he ran support for and I believe the cost for one race is equal to what his vehicles run -- approx $40K). Five years ago, another company did the same with Polaris vehicles ($20-25K, same price as the RZR).There are groups you can hire for a few thousand to handle your fuel logistics all the way down the Penninsula (Mag7 will carry your spare parts AND setup refueling stops for $800 + $200/stop). No matter how you deal with the issue, almost every team needs support.
The only team that I saw soloing it were the folks from GoWesty. They competed unrivaled in the "RV class", had all their spares in the back of their Westfalia camper van, and ran the race purely for the joy of it. We used to race against them in Lemons so it was always fun to see those guys out.
- Like lemons racing, you cannot win a race in any one corner but you can certainly lose a race. If you want to finish, you should really only drive as far as you can see. This means lifting off the throttle as you crest a hill so you can eyeball what dangers might lie ahead. However, if you want to be competitive, you also have to push it sometimes especially if you are chasing down a car to pass them and move up the rankings. Even though the Mexican 1000 is "non-contact" (unlike the Baja 1000) since you can signal your intent to pass and receive acknowledgement through Stella, not everyone listens and not everyone is willing to give up their position. If you signal for a pass (press the blue button) when you see them, lots of drivers (ourslves included) will just floor it and "rabbit away". Instead, you often have to charge right into the dust cloud of their wake, accepting the reduced visibility of the road ahead (sometimes down to 20 or so feet), watch for imminent danger like ruts, and trust your co-driver to call out the next turn so you can anticipate when to steer once you start seeing the road bend in a direction. If you are right up someone's ass when your co-driver signals for a pass and you are honking your horn, they have much less of an excuse for not moving off the racing line and letting you pass. It's a blast.
SIDE NOTE
There are hardly any asians in this sport. I wish there was more diversity here. Except for this other asian I met during tech who had competed in the Mexican 1000 before on bikes and was racing a UTV for the first time, I didn't meet any other asians until the closing awards dinner. Unfortunately James DNF'd on the first day, didn't start day 2 so I never saw him again. Even Vail ski resort had more diversity (also, a place to find rich mexicans).
At the awards ceremony, I finally met two other asian racers (so I was one of three, just like in 2019)
- Lex builds M3 conversions of E46 wagons. He was in Open UTV, blew up his transmission, swapped it, and then proceeded to kill his engine over the course of 6 days He did manage to finish 116th out of 117 and says he'll be back. It was fun to see him and his whole family (brother, kids, wife, and mom) along with his token white guy co-driver. It was like the inverse of my team.
- Dan was a younger guy who actually worked for Ford Motorsports. I was happy to hear that they finished 1st in their class (Heavy Metal) and 5th overall but of course, their approximate budget for this race (the number he threw out) easily exceeded my lifetime motorsports budget for both Brett and me the last 15 years plus my entire EV conversion project (which is already into Plaid EV money). I was willing to concede that HE was the fastest asian at the 2024 Mexican 1000... until the told me that they didn't actually let him drive.
I then promptly reclaimed the title of #chinomasrapido
PS. We should also get some professional photos and drone clips so I'll add them whenever we get the package
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