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Post by truenorth on Nov 22, 2018 7:46:06 GMT -8
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Post by truenorth on Dec 10, 2018 8:12:03 GMT -8
Winning The Baja 1000 Takes Serious Preparation Bradley Brownell Dec 8 2018 Racers started preparing for the Baja 1000 months before the race began. While success takes a lot of luck and good driving during the race, the real race begins with proper build and preparation of the vehicle. This holds as true for Cameron Steele’s winning trophy truck as it does for Pro Moto Unlimited winner Justin Morgan. Both are supported by Monster Energy. Morgan won the race overall, the first bike by nearly 40 minutes. Meanwhile Steele won the coveted Trophy Truck Unlimited class by just over four minutes. It’s one of the last racing events that rewards ultimate preparation for any eventuality, as well as a massive fortitude. Baja is 1000 miles of treacherous terrain, running more than 16 hours through the desert, largely racing in the dark of night. Steele comments in the video below that he thinks racing at night is safer than day driving, because all of the competitors have bright lights on, and you can see them coming, and anything that moves in your light beam is a little easier to pick out. Steele’s winning Trophy Truck gets a lot of the action in this video, likely because it’s easier to film a big truck like that than a small zippy motorcycle.
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Post by truenorth on Dec 19, 2018 13:00:14 GMT -8
4 wheel Dakar is desert racing?
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Post by truenorth on Mar 8, 2019 12:14:52 GMT -8
MOTUL TEAMS UP WITH THE MINT 400 IN LAS VEGAS Motul 07 March Las Vegas might be infamous for partying and gambling, but this weekend the so-called Sin City will be all about off-road racing, as the Mint 400 sets up camp. It is bigger than ever, with just a few of many highlights being the return of bikes, the participation of none other than Jenson Button and the fact that it will feature the first time Motul teams up with the Mint to support its competitors. The Mint 400 is a historical race that takes place in the desert surrounding Las Vegas, combining high speeds and incredibly tough terrain. The first race was held in 1967, and was always a race for both motorcycles, buggies, cars and trucks. In 1977, the motorcycles were banned from competition. In 2019, the bikes are back to play an important role in the great American off-road race. Like most off-road races, such as the infamous Dakar, the Mint 400 is open to a few different categories: trucks, motorbikes and SxS/UTVs. The biggest difference with the Dakar is definitely the cars and trucks. These spectacular vehicles are bespoke off-road machines with incredibly capable long travel suspension and large, roaring V8 engines that put massive power figures onto the dirt. It’s no secret that these machines are a spectator favourite. Off-road racing is definitely gaining momentum, especially the Mint. This is evidenced by the interest and participation of big stars from around the globe. This year, non other then 2009 F1 World champion and reigning Super GT champion (Japanese GT championship) Jenson Button will be participating in the Mint. For the first time, Motul will team up with the Mint 400 and will play a supporting role, looking after the drivers and their machines, and will have a Honda HRC enduro bike on display at its booth. Motul USA’s Nolan Browning is convinced that this partnership is a big step for Motul. “Off-road racing has always been a part of Motul’s DNA,” he says, “and we have a long history in other races, such as the Dakar. That’s why it makes perfect sense to start a similar story here in the US. This year’s Mint 400 will be incredible, with the return of the motorbikes. In addition you have the SxS category, which is absolutely booming. With Motul being a very Powersport-oriented brand, it’s a no-brainer for us to be here. Plus, who doesn’t like going to Vegas?”
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Post by wilmywood8455 on Mar 14, 2019 12:15:55 GMT -8
I crewed the Mint 400 a couple of times back in the mid to late 80's for a couple guys I knew from SoCal. Those were dusty, dirty MFers lol
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Post by truenorth on Jun 11, 2019 6:04:31 GMT -8
GRABOWSKI BROTHERS CONQUER THE BAJA 500 07.06.2019 Dustin Grabowski and Cody Woodruff have been tackling the Baja races in Mexico for years, but this time they showed their true pace and came out on top in the Class 5 unlimited category during the Baja 500 race - the little brother of the infamous Baja 1000. Once the dust had settled, we had a quick chat with them to learn all about Baja and what it takes to tackle it. GUYS, FIRST OF ALL CONGRATULATIONS ON A BIG WIN. YOU’VE COME A LONG WAY. WHERE DID THE GRABOWSKI BROTHERS RACING TEAM START OUT? Dustin: I started out when I was very young. My dad was always racing and building things so I literally grew up with the sport. By the time I was six my dad had built me an off-road cart to go out and practise with, and it just got more and more serious after that. I started competing properly when I was twelve but I’ve been pretty much been driving and racing for as long as I can remember. TELL US A LITTLE ABOUT THE CAR. IT LOOKS REALLY WILD. WHAT KIND OF CAR IS IT? Cody: So it’s a Class 5 unlimited Baja bug with a Subaru FB25 engine in it. WAIT, LET ME STOP YOU THERE… IT’S A BAJA BUG, AS IN VOLKSWAGEN BEETLE BASED? Cody: Yes and no. It’s a Class 5 unlimited bug. Which means you have to match some geometry regulations, so you have to have the front lay-out of a bug and the choice of engine is limited too. But that’s pretty much it, so it doesn’t have a lot in common with a bug. A few years ago, things were different because you needed to have an air-cooled Volkswagen or Porsche engine, but nowadays we run a naturally aspirated four-cylinder 2.5l boxer engine, the FB25. WHEN I LOOK AT THE CAR, I IMMEDIATELY NOTICE THAT THE SUSPENSION LOOKS LIKE IT’S THE KEY INGREDIENT OF THE VEHICLE? Dustin: Yes it is. We run long-travel king shocks with external bypass, which makes this bug move incredibly fast over the whoops and bumps that Baja throws at us. BAJA SEEMS TO BE THE RACE THAT EVERYONE WANTS TO WIN. WHAT MAKES IT SO SPECIAL? Cody: Baja is the toughest of them all and it is indeed the race that everyone wants to win. It throws everything at you all at once. This edition was really tough. We went through a water splash and then came straight out into that dust and soft mushy sand, which stuck to us and the car. We even took out a cactus, and because we have no windshield most of it came right into the cockpit. That wasn’t much fun WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE BAJA 500 AND 1000 APART FROM THE DISTANCE…? Cody: Baja 500 is shorter but also more technical, which makes it a lot tougher in my opinion. In the 1000 section there are a lot more long fast stretches. Dustin: The 500 is also run as a loop, so when all the vehicles have gone around once the surface conditions deteriorate rapidly. WHAT DOES A BAJA WEEKEND LOOK LIKE? Cody: It’s a lot more than just a weekend. This year we arrived 8 days before the event and we spent the days before practising the course. We were scouting the track looking for possible hazards and looking at which side of the track would be better to take. We’re not allowed to use our race vehicle to do that, so we used a Polaris or our Can-am Maverick. YOU TEAMED UP WITH SUBARU AND MOTUL. HOW DID THAT PARTNERSHIP HAPPEN? Dustin: Well, we’d been working a lot with Crawford performance, who built the engine for us, and they suggested the Subaru engine. After that Subaru contacted us and started to support us as a Subaru motorsport team, which is a great honour for us. The partnership with Motul came about in a pretty similar way. Crawford used it as they had a good relationship with Motul and it made sense to take it further because Motul is a Subaru OEM partner. Until last year we’d never really had direct contact, but at Reno to Vegas Motul had a booth and we got talking, and now things are a lot more official.
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Post by truenorth on Jun 17, 2019 16:05:56 GMT -8
June 15, 2019 DESERT RACER ROD HALL: 1937-2019 He raced in 50 consecutive Baja 1000s and won class victories in half of them, with an overall win in 1969 MARK VAUGHN Autoweek Rod Hall, the desert racing great who used skill, patience, fearlessness and wit to win more races than anyone in the history of the sport, has died at 81. “No one in SCORE International racing history has raced longer, harder or better than Rod Hall,” said a statement from racing sanctioning body SCORE International. “Since his (class) win at the inaugural 1967 1000, he has racked up a collection of Baja 1000 and Baja 500 wins, as well as a record of consecutive wins, that will most likely never be equalled.” Hall competed in a remarkable 50 consecutive Baja 1000s, winning overall in 1969 and winning his class 25 times. His final Baja 1000 was in 2017, which he ran just shy of his 80th birthday. In the late '70s and early '80s, driving a 4WD Dodge for Bill Stroppe, Hall and co-driver Jim Fricker strung together 37 consecutive SCORE and HDRA race wins, according to the Off-Road Motorsports Hall of Fame, a record unbroken to this day and one that will likely remain so. He finished second in the 1982 Marlboro Safari Rally in Kenya, won the 12,500-mile Repco Reliability Trials in Australia and returned to that event in 1985 to win the Production 4WD class. In 1993 Hall switched to Hummer and represented that brand for the rest of his driving career, which included more class wins in Baja as well as fourth- and fifth-place finishes with son Chad in the 1996 Paris-Dakar. His wins include 10 Mint 400s, 10 Parker 400s, 12 Fireworks 250s, and 12 Baja 500 and 17 Baja 1000 class victories. He won 14 major class points championships in production 4WD vehicles and “well over” 150 major events, according to the Off-Road Motorsports Hall of Fame, which inducted him in 2005 He wasn’t always the fastest off the line, though. He learned early on the value of patience, especially in races that could last days instead of hours, minutes or seconds. Hall learned early on to take care of the race truck so it’d make it all the way to the finish line, epitomizing the adage that to finish first, first you have to finish. “I was never a fast guy, and I was never the first guy to the first checkpoint,” Hall said in a SCORE video. “But I did learn that you don’t go any slower than you have to in the rough stuff, maybe you can just pull out a mile and a half faster than the other guys without beatin’ up your car. Anybody can go fast in the fast area, but it’s the slower areas, I think, where I learned how to win races.” Survival was critical, especially in early races when technology was crude or non-existent. There was no GPS in that first Baja 1000 in 1967, for instance. “We all just dove off into the desert in Tijuana and a coupla’ days later some of us showed up in La Paz,” he once told Autoweek. “The first Baja 1000 came by in 1967, from Tijuana to La Paz, and you gotta remember, in 1967 it was pretty barren country down there,” Hall said in the SCORE video. “There were no paved roads and there were no signs that said, ‘La Paz This Way.’ The way we navigated was we just took the main road and the main road was what the race course was on, so the only thing you had to do was make the checkpoints.” He made them all, for 50 years straight, and did it with humour. "To be a desert racer takes two things,'' he once said. "You've got to be tough and dumb; either order's okay.''
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Post by truenorth on Jul 22, 2019 15:32:14 GMT -8
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Post by truenorth on Nov 13, 2019 18:39:19 GMT -8
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Post by wilmywood8455 on Nov 23, 2019 8:12:03 GMT -8
Baja 1000: Manana was the right choiceThe road to Ensenada’s fabled Horsepower Ranch is a short, undulating dirt road that takes lucky visitors to a 140-acre slice of off-road racing heaven. The sport’s cultural history literally hangs from the ranch’s Carrera Cantina walls, intermixed with framed images of the rich and famous who have partied here: The late Paul Newman. Sandra Bullock. Patrick Dempsey. Mario Andretti. That road is only about a half mile long, but this morning’s somewhat adventurous commute here was a striking example of why SCORE Internationals decision to postpone the race for 24 hours due to a historic rain series of rain storms was the correct one. If you haven’t visited this land, for a race or otherwise, it is difficult to comprehend why the world’s most famous off-road endurance race can’t run in any condition. After all, it’s supposed to be a tough race for equally tough humans and machines. The overall infrastructure here, well, isn’t. The two main highways for chase teams to access the course can be hazardous, and without engineered drainage in many places even traffic on non-race days can grind to numerous halts. Sending out thousands of friends, family and crew into the vastness of Baja without regard for safety would have represented a total lack of responsibility on SCORE’s part. Then there is the race course. Four-wheel category pole sitter and recent Baja 400 winner Ryan Arciero jumped into a helicopter today to do an aerial pre-run of the first 200 miles. As the first person on the road outside of the motorcycle racers, it was the only prudent thing to do. This is the first time in ages that earning a pole position may be a distinct disadvantage. racer.com/2019/11/22/baja-1000-manana-was-the-right-choice/
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Post by wilmywood8455 on Nov 23, 2019 8:12:32 GMT -8
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Post by wilmywood8455 on Nov 23, 2019 8:17:24 GMT -8
Baja 1000 with Rossi and Honda, Day 2: Dangers of a day offMelissa Eickhoff is embedded with the Honda Off-Road Racing Team for the Baja 1000. The team is fielding IndyCar star Alexander Rossi, team owner/driver Jeff Proctor and Baja veteran Pat Dailey in a Honda Ridgeline.An unexpected day off due to several days of rain undoubtedly left many teams, spectators, support staff and members of the media with new challenges. As I’m spending this Baja 1000 with Rossi and friends, the following may or may not have happened to us, but I’m positive we are not alone… The Dangers of a Day Off at the Baja 1000 1. You didn’t pack enough underwear. 2. You run your section again and break someone else’s pre-runner. 3. You find a “short cut” home and end up burying the grille of a stock Honda Pilot in a sewage canal while towing a trailer. (Turns out short-cuts in Baja, aren’t.) 4. Too many margaritas. 5. You are late to the drivers meeting. (See Nos. 2 and 3.) 6. You lose track of your guests, sponsors and some of your crew. (See No. 4.) 7. You’re camping along the race course and run out of provisions, i.e. beer; and there are no locals to bail you out. 8. One day too long with your roommates in the rented house… 9. Suddenly, the drivers meeting is super important and you realize traffic in Ensenada rivals the I-405 in LA. 10. You waaaaay overthink all the possible course changes (rumors, rumors, rumors) that don’t actually happen. racer.com/2019/11/22/baja-1000-with-rossi-and-honda-day-2-dangers-of-a-day-off/
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Post by Spin on Nov 23, 2019 11:21:24 GMT -8
I miss the days when drivers raced anything they could strap into. The $multi-million contracts ended that...
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Post by truenorth on Nov 23, 2019 14:37:36 GMT -8
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Post by Pistola on Nov 23, 2019 18:47:17 GMT -8
Shhhhh.......................Jensen Button is wandering in the desert.
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Post by truenorth on Nov 24, 2019 7:04:26 GMT -8
Shhhhh.......................Jensen Button is wandering in the desert. He's into a different kind of fasting.
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Post by Spin on Nov 24, 2019 7:11:09 GMT -8
Last year's highlights for one idiot driver
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Post by Pistola on Nov 24, 2019 12:50:06 GMT -8
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Post by Pistola on Nov 25, 2019 18:46:40 GMT -8
Shhhhh.......................Jensen Button is wandering in the desert. He's into a different kind of fasting. Turns out he was just on an overnight camp out. I think there's a merit badge for that.
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Post by truenorth on Nov 26, 2019 12:22:46 GMT -8
November 26, 2019 LOCAL BOYS WIN BIG: THE AMPUDIA BROS. OF ENSENADA WIN A RAIN-SOAKED BAJA 1000 The rain-soaked, mud-caked race, delayed 24 hours, was the wettest in years. Autoweek MARK VAUGHN Local heroes Alan and Aaron Ampudia, with navigator Rodrigo Ampudia, second-generation racing brothers from Ensenada, Baja California, Mexico, won the 52nd running of the SCORE Baja 1000 in muddy conditions not seen in Baja in years. For three days before the start of the race, rain came down in sheets across the beautiful Baja Peninsula, flooding streets, washing out roads, forming little lakes all over the course and turning the normally dry wash—up which the teams roared from the start in downtown Ensenada—into a river passable only by jet ski. The deluge and its damage were so bad, organizers delayed the start of the race 24 hours to give teams a chance to pre-run the course and give crews a chance to repair damage caused by what was listed as 4 inches of rain. None of that mattered to the Ampudias, who finished the 800-mile course in a little more than 16 hours. “This has been a dream for us since we were little, watching Ivan Stewart, Robby Gordon, all the legends in this sport,” said Alan, 28, who drove the first 350 miles before handing over to his brother Aaron. “To be able to come out here with a stacked field like it was today and come out on top through all the elements Baja threw at us this year with the rain and the mud, it was crazy.” Second place went to first-time Baja runner and three-time Dakar Rally winner Nasser Al-Attiyah, sharing driving duties this time in a Jesse Jones Ford F-250 Trophy Truck co-driven by Australian Toby Price. “This is my first SCORE Baja 1000 and it was fantastic,” said Al-Attiyah, who took over the truck at mile marker 530 from co-driver Jones. “Compared to my Dakar car, there is no limit with these trucks and I really love to be here. I promise I am coming back next year.” Third place went to Luke McMillin, of the desert-racing McMillin family, who shared driving duties with 13-time Baja 1000 overall winner Larry Roeseler. Mark Walser and Luke Johnson were fourth, and four-time Baja 1000 winner Rob MacCachren and Justin B. Smith finished fifth. All of the top five finishers were in Trophy Trucks. The first motorcycle this year finished sixth overall, a Honda CRF450X co-ridden by Justin Morgan, David Kamo, Max Eddy Jr. and Shane Esposito. This year’s 1000 was a giant loop course, starting and finishing in the coastal resort town of Ensenada, about an hour south of the border. Of 275 entries listed before the rain started, only 164 actually showed up Saturday and started; of those, 145 finished. “It was a very difficult SCORE Baja 1000,” Roeseler said.
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