By Bob Bower & David Kennedy
Photography: Bob Bower & David Kennedy
We Race the Baja 1000 in a 6.0L Super Duty
Editor's Note:The
Baja 1000 is the world’s most famous off-road race. It’s held every year in Mexico on the Baja peninsula, just south of San Diego, California. It’s a race that started as a bet between some friends more than 40 years ago. And it’s evolved into a motorsport that takes hundreds of drivers, thousands of mechanics, and millions of dollars of race vehicles over some of the worst “roads” in North America. The Baja 1000 is the ultimate test of man and his machine, and the kind of experience you just can’t
believe until you see it for yourself.
At a race like the Baja 1000, many of the true tales can sound stranger than fiction. And only a storyteller, like our man Bob Bower, could even come close to capturing the adventure we had as it unfolded last November.
–David Kennedy
Truck #862 Baja 1000 Race Report
No
successful race ever starts at the green flag. That
said, the stock fullsize Ford Super Duty race truck
of Team Donahoe/Banks delivered more success than non-success
in its first diesel-powered Baja 1000 assault. Of course,
we wanted to get across that finish line and see that
checkered flag in the allotted time, but this year
it was not to be. But, for every loss and every victory
at the Baja 1000, there is a story to be told. This
year, our tale began with more than 40 people, 12 chase
vehicles, and a race truck that runs on Number 2 diesel.
A quick profile of our race machine is in order.
It’s a 6.0L diesel Ford F-250 Super Duty. It weighs more than 8,000 pounds. It has a chrome-moly safety cage, an on-board navigation system, a breathing apparatus, the toughest tires you can buy, and the biggest shocks you’ve ever seen. And it seats three.
Our strategy would be simple. Gale Banks–yup, that Gale Banks–would take the truck off the starting line and run the F-250 for the first 70 miles of the Baja 1000 out of Ensenada. Having enough power was not a question. We were competing in a racing class full of “stock” pickup trucks, yet we had more torque than the gasoline vehicles running in the unlimited classes. We weren’t cheating. It just felt like we were.
At the Starting Line
Having
Gale Banks join the team as the driver who would take
the truck at the start was significant. Although his
race experience is better known for the records he
set at the Bonneville Salt Flats, his off-road driving
experience came mostly from frequent off-road driving
on his property in the Yosemite Valley. Baja is not
Yosemite, but Banks is no slouch either. With a bit
of coaching during his prerun miles, he was quick to
pick up on the added elements that are important to
driving in an off-road race situation.
After more than 300 high-horsepower Trophy Trucks,
buggies, and motorcycles hit the course, our “slow” class gets to bring up the rear. We took the green flag at just after noon. Up the wash and on to the graded road at the end of Avenue Ruiz, we came upon the first surprise for Banks. At race mile 4 was a steep silt hill. The hill wasn’t the surprise for him. It was there on the prerun we made the night before, and we knew it would be busy when we got to it on race day. No, the hill wouldn’t be a problem, we were in a four-wheel-drive diesel F-250 on the largest and strongest BFGoodrich tires available. We had plenty of ground clearance and weighed more than four tons, so simply motoring to the top was not a question. That is, of course, unless the course was blocked by other two-wheel-drive race cars who were either stuck, or about to be stuck.
And there they were. Many of them were motionless, but a good number of
them were still spitting up dirt and dust in their attempt to get up the
hill. Then (as if that weren’t enough) from the bottom of the hill, we saw there was a brush fire at the top. The fire, fanned by helicopters–used as chase vehicles by the big-money teams–overhead, was going full force when we got to it. Now, we’ve done a lot of things in Baja races, but never have we pointed the race truck at a 20-foot wall of flames and tried to drive through it–that is, until this year.
What
Could Possibly Go Wrong?
What the heck–with a cloud of thick smoke to blind us, and a steep silty hill to slow us, what could possibly go wrong? With a responsive throttle and a little sphincter clench, we blew right through the flames. From then on, it was just a matter of dealing with the booby traps set in the racecourse by the locals, and we were on our way.
Now We're Racing
Banks
handled the terrain and race situation with control.
We got to the road crossing at Ojos Negros (race mile
35) and felt a certain sense of liberation from the
jam up of people and booby traps in the first section.
Banks started to get completely tuned into the truck.
He was driving it very well–fast, controlled, and well within the limits.
We caught up and passed our first diesel competitor,
the 6.5L Hummer H1 of Chad Hall, in the Tres Hermanos
area (race mile 50). Mike Winkle was at the wheel.
He was running a conservative pace in the rough and
accelerating on the straight flat sections, which
is very smart driving for that stage of the race.
But, Banks wanted to go faster. Our Ford wanted to go faster. Yet, our
pace was well ahead of the race plan. We were running a winning pace for
the Baja 1000–not a finishing pace. The job at hand was to deliver a fit race truck to the next drivers. We stuck to the job, slowed down, and held our speed.
All too quickly we got to the highway and pulled into our pit for a driver
swap at race mile 70. Wow. It was over for Gale Banks and me. Out of the
truck and the next guys got in and went. Steve Krieger at the wheel with
Diesel Power’s trusty Editor David Kennedy in the right seat. From there, my job was to run chase truck #10 ahead to Borrego at race mile 200 and be ready to rendezvous with the Super Duty sometime after dark.
Lost Our Steering
Not
an hour later, I heard reports over the radio that
our F-250 had reached the top of the summit at race
mile 90 and exploded the steering box. Between the
weight of the 4-ton truck and those huge 39-inch tires,
the forces on the steering box must be enormous. Luckily,
Team Donahoe/Banks made sure to mount a spare box on
the truck, just in case something like this happened.
It took the guys a little more than an hour to change
the steering gear and drain some ATF from the transmission
to refill the steering system. By then, the sun had
set and it was time to fire up the HID KC lights and
motor on to Borrego through the dreaded silt beds that lay ahead.
We knew communication with the race truck would be spotty over the next
few hours as the F-250 roared southeast down the backside of the summit.
We didn’t hear the reports from the team that our Super Duty was charging toward the El Diablo dry lake at speeds close to 90 mph. It was only later that we learned how well the 6.0L Super Duty surged through the sand and ate up off-road obstacles that swallowed other vehicles alive.
Gasoline Sucks!
I
heard over the radio relay network that there were
problems with Team Donahoe/Banks sister truck (a Class
7 Toyota Tacoma 4x4) that could be in trouble. The
report was not great. The Toyota Tacoma was guzzling
gasoline. More than twice the amount we planned for it to use. Dylan
Evans, Donahoe Racing’s in-house engineer, gave me and chase truck #10 a new mission. Instead of meeting the Super Duty at race mile 200, I had to get two gasoline dump cans to race mile 244. Meet the Toyota, fuel it, and then refill the gas cans at the Pemex station in San Felipe, so I could fuel the little Toyota again at Morelia Junction around race mile 350. I was off toward San Felipe within minutes, knowing that we could be stuck for hours at a Mexican military checkpoint we would have to pass through.
Stuck In Two-Wheel Drive
Over
the radio, we heard that our diesel F-250 had come
into the Borrego pit at race mile 200 around 8 p.m.
The other chase teams fueled the truck, made its second
driver swap, and sent it off into the night. It wasn’t long before the radio crackled with more bad news. Shortly after the Borrego pit stop, our F-250 broke the front axle’s ring-and-pinion gearset. We’d been running the truck in four-wheel-drive for more than 200 miles. We were now a two-wheel-drive race truck–no, check that, an 8,000-pound two-wheel-drive race truck. Oh yes, and it was on its way to run the San Felipe loop, some of the loosest terrain the truck would face on the entire course.
The Class 7 Team Donahoe Tacoma got to me at race mile 244 at about
2 a.m. on Saturday. We dumped the fuel into the tank, and it scooted
off into the dark. It had caught up to our Ford Super Duty, stuck
in the dreaded sands of the Matomi Wash, and pulled it out in the
wee hours of the morning. The two trucks ran together for the rest
of the night, like David and Goliath. Without four-wheel-drive in
the Super Duty, the wash crossings would have been a blood bath if
the little Toyota weren’t there to pull it out.
There was nothing for us to do while both trucks were so far south,
so we drove north to a nice spot south of San Matias along the highway
at race mile 390 and parked. We monitored the radio and napped. You
know how it works: sort of sleep, sort of listen. Neither gets done
well, but rest happens. Naptime ended at dawn, but the trucks were
still making their way up from the San Felipe loop. We go to race
mile 404 and set up the pit. Our Goliath F-250 pulled into the pit
first. Our third and final driver swap happened, and Bill Donahoe
got out of the driver seat and Steve Krieger got back in to take
the truck up around the Mike’s Sky Ranch loop and back toward Valle De La Trinidad. Dylan Evans brought the Tacoma race truck in on the heels of our Super Duty. That truck swapped drivers, gassed, and took off again into the dust and sunrise.
Change of Plans
Knowing
that our chances of finishing with either truck in
the required 30-hour time limit was unlikely, our chase
teams hung out at race mile 404 for some time. We shared
a light breakfast and some heavy stories about our
experiences over the last 12 hours. Then, the radio
call none of us wanted to hear came in. Our Tacoma was broken on
the road to Mike’s. The reports were sketchy, but it sounded like a rear spring pin had broken and the axle was sliding out from under the truck. We were going to have to send in a chase team to fix the Toyota.
We loaded chase truck #10 with tools and parts and hustled off
to fix the broken truck. The rest of Team Donahoe/Banks packed
up our support trucks and headed north to a wide spot on the highway
just before Valle De La Trinidad at race mile 540. The radio reception
was good there, but the good radio reception delivered more bad
news about our F-250. Somewhere around race mile 460, the bolts
holding the driver-side full-floating rear axleshaft sheared in
the wheel hub. The axleshaft was sliding out of the axlehousing!
Our four-wheel-drive F-250, that was running through some of the
worst terrain Mother Nature had to offer (in two-wheel drive) for
the last 200 miles, was now a one-wheel-drive 8,000-pound anchor.
Our Toyota race truck was still 20 miles behind the Ford, fixing
it’s own axle problem, and both trucks were so far from our chase crews they were basically on their own.
Now finishing the race was a remote prospect, and surviving was
the priority. Chase truck #4 was over on the Pacific side of the
peninsula and was instructed to travel overland to race mile 460
to lend assistance. The plan was to get the F-250 out of a wash
it was stuck in and nurse it to BFGoodrich’s pit at race mile 475. Then, we’d plan to get it to the highway and drive it under its own power back up to Ensenada.
We Still Came Home Winners
Sometime
just after lunch on Saturday, both of our trucks timed
out of the race. They failed to clear a checkpoint in the required
time limit. Krieger was able to get the Super Duty unstuck by
airing down the right rear tire to 5 psi. Then, to
be a good guy, he pulled another race truck out of
the wash, after it had been stuck there since late
the night before. Even in one-wheel drive our F-250
could still tow.
With both race trucks in full recovery mode, we stopped in Valle
De La Trinidad for tacos, chatter and fuel. The long drive back
to Ensenada seemed unusually short on Highway 3. Most of us got
to the hotel in Ensenada at about 3:30 p.m. on Saturday.
Damn. It was a great time. How lucky can a guy get? Team Donahoe/Banks
was all back and safe from a grand adventure by 7 that night.
We didn’t win. We didn’t finish. But, we didn’t quit either. Old Mr. Baja got the upper hand this time. But, we’ll be back again.
Life is a one-lap race! |
