Tecate Score Baja 1000

I just got home Sunday night from one amazing adventure. My buddy from church, Josh called me a couple of weeks ago and asked me if I wanted to go down to Baja California and help pit for his cousin's team, Deen Racing. This was for the big race, the Baja 1000. This year's race was a straight line from Ensenada to La Paz. I hesitated at first because of my schedule but decided that this would be too good of an opportunity to pass up. I had no idea what kind of team this was other than it was class 5, the 1600cc class Volkswagen racecar. We drove down to Lakeside to meet the rest of the team Wednesday morning and we crossed the border in to Tijuana around 9am. After stopping for our visitor visas we left for Ensenada where contingency was going to be held. This was the check-in and safety and mechanical inspection before the cars start the race Thursday morning. After contingency we started south to our pre-assigned locations. I was assigned to 'Chase 6'. Our job was to drive down to race mile 724 (about 30 miles North of Loreto) to do the third driver change. The driver change was scheduled to happen between 3am and 8am. The course was in really rough shape because of a recent hurricane but we had to be ready for anything. Our first night the whole team was still together and we stopped around 1am at an abandoned Pemex gas station. I really couldn't tell you how to get to it but I do konw that it was at the turnoff for the Bay of LA. We got up at around 7am, had a quick breakfast and hit the road for our campsite in South Baja. We got there around dark, but the drive was incredible. We were ahead of the race at large at that point so we settled in and made some dinner. Sometime in the middle of the night the trophy trucks and unlimited buggies started roaring through camp. Those things run a really high octane fuel and kick up a lot of dust and silt. The air at our camp/pit was really thick but it was exciting. These vehicles run lights that are bright like the sun. You can see them coming a mile away in the dark especially with all the dust in the air. Its all very exciting.

The driver change happened at 7am, a little ahead of what we were expecting given the bad condition of the course. After that, chase 6 split off and went about an hour South of Loreto and we waited at the next course road crossing. We met up with all of the other chase teams and we did a couple of tire changes there. After that we played leap frog with all the teams until we got to La Paz. My team beat the car there by about an hour. We had a chance to walk around the finish line and see the commotion and the energy of car after car coming in. We saw mostly the big dollar cars coming in while we waited and then finally, here comes 570, Deen racing. It was thrilling to see our car come accross and I am only a stand in. It must have been really satisfying for the people that really make up this team.

Deen Racing finished 2nd in their class and 32nd overall. There were 24 cars in their class, only 5 finished. The total number of entries for this year's race was about 450 cars, trucks, motorcycles and quads. I would say that they did really well for a family team from Lakeside with little to no sponsorship.

All in all, a great time. I will post lots of pictures in my Box. For now, check out the Google Earth file of this year's race course.