desertspeed
Well-Known Member
This is going to be a long report of my experience racing the 50th Baja 1000 from a relatively low budget team’s perspective. I am going to break it up into multiple sections and hopefully some of my other Wolfpack teammates will chime in and add their experiences and pictures. I have tons of in car video but haven’t had the chance to go thorough and edit them yet. I will add those to this thread as I get a chance.
First a little background, I have been going to Baja since 1991, lots of surfing and camping trips with friends. We got into desert racing in the late 90’s and our first Baja race was the 2000 where we helped chase for a friend’s 7s truck. Incredible experience and we were hooked. We raced a class 12 car and then a class 10 car for several years before life and work got in the way. Our last race was the 2012 1000, but I still go down to Baja as often as I can.
I have had my truck since new (2001)- it was my daily driver for many years and slowly evolved into a prerunner with an H&M bolt on kit, then a cage and links. I have a full build thread here: H&M 4WD Supercrew Build In 2011 I ran out of talent and took the front end out on a large boulder in the Pine Forest. It sat for several years until last year when I decided to get it going again, so I dropped it off at HM Racing Design for their class 8 kit, rebuild of the front end, and switch from 4WD to 2WD with a new drivetrain.
On New Year’s day I was having a beer (or several) with a buddy and made the decision to race the 1000. I didn’t want to miss out on the 50th, and decided it would be awesome to do it in my own truck, even though it is really more of a prerunner than a true race truck. I also had no team, not enough spares, the truck wasn’t close to being finished, but whatever, it sounded like a good idea at the time
. The truck was supposed to be done in March, and then April, and then June, but I was finally able to pick it up mid-July. Yay, only 4 months to wire, plumb, test, etc. All from St. George, which doesn’t have anything resembling a Kartek, so almost everything needed to be ordered online and shipped. Amazon Prime quickly became my best friend.
As anyone who has ever built a vehicle knows, it is the little things that seem to take the longest. I won’t bore anyone with the details, but it was early Oct before I was able to start it up for the first time. I got it down to Vegas for the exhaust and tuning- quick shout out here to Gil @ HP Specialties out by the raceway in Vegas. They were awesome to deal with and very reasonable and did a great job on the tuning.
After that it was back home for some final items and I was able to take it on its first shake down run. Everything felt OK except for the power steering, which would cut out at low RPM, which was really fun the first time it happened going into a corner. After a call to PSS, we diagnosed a bad valve in the pump. It was now early Nov and I was running out of time- I met Kevin from HM Racing in Barstow for some shock testing on Nov 4 and he brought out a new pump. After switching the pump the steering was perfect, except that the pully on the new pump seemed misaligned. It was fully pressed on though, so we ran with it (more on that later). After some shock tuning, Kevin took the truck down to the shop for a week to mount lights, window nets, re-valve the rear shocks, and a few other last minute things. I headed back home to work on wheels/tires, pit boxes, logistics, etc. before heading down to Baja.
So flash back to June- I still did not have the truck home yet but figured I should start putting a team together. After reaching out to several close friends who I was hoping would be able to join me, I decided to post up here on RDC and a couple other websites offering rides in exchange for chase support. I did not want this to be a pay to ride scenario, because I didn’t want there to be any sort of obligation or expectation for me to cater to anyone- I wanted a group of people that were there for the fun and adventure, a group of friends rather than “clients”. I got 35-40 responses from all over, including Canada, but I knew many of them would drop out as the race got closer.
Beginning in August the team members started firming up as peoples’ plans changed, life got in the way, etc., and we were down to 11 people. Two of my closest friends, a couple of people that I had met but didn’t know very well, and several that were imaginary internet friends, including a father and son who were coming out from TN and a badass girl coming by herself all the way from Alberta Canada. We started having weekly group calls, getting to know each other and sharing our Baja knowledge and racing experience, as well as working on logistics for the race. I will introduce everyone when we get to their section, but after a really stressful day two weeks before we were scheduled to leave when 3 people called me to say they had to drop out, we were down to 7 navigators and 5 chase vehicles. Not ideal but we were able to put together a chase plan that would work.
We also decided on a team name, which Wayne (IRONGOOK) was nice enough to let us borrow for the race and seemed to fit perfectly considering how the team came together- Wolfpack Racing.
As Alan from The Hangover said: “You guys might not know this, but I consider myself a bit of a loner. I tend to think of myself as a one-man wolf pack. But when my sister brought Doug home, I knew he was one of my own. And my wolf pack... it grew by one. So there... there were two of us in the wolf pack... I was alone first in the pack, and then Doug joined in later. And six months ago, when Doug introduced me to you guys, I thought, "Wait a second, could it be?" And now I know for sure, I just added two more guys to my wolf pack.”
Chris Tobin and his son Kyle modified the Wolfpack Racing logo and we got a bunch of stickers made up for the race.
On Sat, Nov 11 I loaded up my van and trailer with a crap ton of spares, pit boxes, and everything else I could think of and headed to San Diego. I spent Sat at Kartek and a bunch of other places picking up parts, went to the BFG meeting on Sunday with Pahl (WannaB-class5), and spent Monday at HM Racing getting things finished up on the truck. As always, it never goes as planned and we were working on getting the brakes working right well into the night. We finally finished up, got it loaded on the trailer, and back to my mom’s house in Escondido. Several hours of packing later, I was able to grab a few hours of sleep before our planned 5:00 am departure for Ensenada.
More to come……
First a little background, I have been going to Baja since 1991, lots of surfing and camping trips with friends. We got into desert racing in the late 90’s and our first Baja race was the 2000 where we helped chase for a friend’s 7s truck. Incredible experience and we were hooked. We raced a class 12 car and then a class 10 car for several years before life and work got in the way. Our last race was the 2012 1000, but I still go down to Baja as often as I can.
I have had my truck since new (2001)- it was my daily driver for many years and slowly evolved into a prerunner with an H&M bolt on kit, then a cage and links. I have a full build thread here: H&M 4WD Supercrew Build In 2011 I ran out of talent and took the front end out on a large boulder in the Pine Forest. It sat for several years until last year when I decided to get it going again, so I dropped it off at HM Racing Design for their class 8 kit, rebuild of the front end, and switch from 4WD to 2WD with a new drivetrain.
On New Year’s day I was having a beer (or several) with a buddy and made the decision to race the 1000. I didn’t want to miss out on the 50th, and decided it would be awesome to do it in my own truck, even though it is really more of a prerunner than a true race truck. I also had no team, not enough spares, the truck wasn’t close to being finished, but whatever, it sounded like a good idea at the time
. The truck was supposed to be done in March, and then April, and then June, but I was finally able to pick it up mid-July. Yay, only 4 months to wire, plumb, test, etc. All from St. George, which doesn’t have anything resembling a Kartek, so almost everything needed to be ordered online and shipped. Amazon Prime quickly became my best friend.As anyone who has ever built a vehicle knows, it is the little things that seem to take the longest. I won’t bore anyone with the details, but it was early Oct before I was able to start it up for the first time. I got it down to Vegas for the exhaust and tuning- quick shout out here to Gil @ HP Specialties out by the raceway in Vegas. They were awesome to deal with and very reasonable and did a great job on the tuning.
After that it was back home for some final items and I was able to take it on its first shake down run. Everything felt OK except for the power steering, which would cut out at low RPM, which was really fun the first time it happened going into a corner
. After a call to PSS, we diagnosed a bad valve in the pump. It was now early Nov and I was running out of time- I met Kevin from HM Racing in Barstow for some shock testing on Nov 4 and he brought out a new pump. After switching the pump the steering was perfect, except that the pully on the new pump seemed misaligned. It was fully pressed on though, so we ran with it (more on that later). After some shock tuning, Kevin took the truck down to the shop for a week to mount lights, window nets, re-valve the rear shocks, and a few other last minute things. I headed back home to work on wheels/tires, pit boxes, logistics, etc. before heading down to Baja.So flash back to June- I still did not have the truck home yet but figured I should start putting a team together. After reaching out to several close friends who I was hoping would be able to join me, I decided to post up here on RDC and a couple other websites offering rides in exchange for chase support. I did not want this to be a pay to ride scenario, because I didn’t want there to be any sort of obligation or expectation for me to cater to anyone- I wanted a group of people that were there for the fun and adventure, a group of friends rather than “clients”. I got 35-40 responses from all over, including Canada, but I knew many of them would drop out as the race got closer.
Beginning in August the team members started firming up as peoples’ plans changed, life got in the way, etc., and we were down to 11 people. Two of my closest friends, a couple of people that I had met but didn’t know very well, and several that were imaginary internet friends, including a father and son who were coming out from TN and a badass girl coming by herself all the way from Alberta Canada. We started having weekly group calls, getting to know each other and sharing our Baja knowledge and racing experience, as well as working on logistics for the race. I will introduce everyone when we get to their section, but after a really stressful day two weeks before we were scheduled to leave when 3 people called me to say they had to drop out, we were down to 7 navigators and 5 chase vehicles. Not ideal but we were able to put together a chase plan that would work.
We also decided on a team name, which Wayne (IRONGOOK) was nice enough to let us borrow for the race and seemed to fit perfectly considering how the team came together- Wolfpack Racing.
As Alan from The Hangover said: “You guys might not know this, but I consider myself a bit of a loner. I tend to think of myself as a one-man wolf pack. But when my sister brought Doug home, I knew he was one of my own. And my wolf pack... it grew by one. So there... there were two of us in the wolf pack... I was alone first in the pack, and then Doug joined in later. And six months ago, when Doug introduced me to you guys, I thought, "Wait a second, could it be?" And now I know for sure, I just added two more guys to my wolf pack.”
Chris Tobin and his son Kyle modified the Wolfpack Racing logo and we got a bunch of stickers made up for the race.
On Sat, Nov 11 I loaded up my van and trailer with a crap ton of spares, pit boxes, and everything else I could think of and headed to San Diego. I spent Sat at Kartek and a bunch of other places picking up parts, went to the BFG meeting on Sunday with Pahl (WannaB-class5), and spent Monday at HM Racing getting things finished up on the truck. As always, it never goes as planned and we were working on getting the brakes working right well into the night. We finally finished up, got it loaded on the trailer, and back to my mom’s house in Escondido. Several hours of packing later, I was able to grab a few hours of sleep before our planned 5:00 am departure for Ensenada.
More to come……
