St. Pat and I flew into San Diego Wednesday morning and hitched a ride into Tijuana with Mark DeShane and crew (Steve Taylor and Wayne Latcher) and their 5-1600 car. We hooked up with Mike during tech and contingency in T.J. After a fun day of downtown TJ, and all the pre-race visiting we headed back to our room to finish up the car. We loaded spare parts, tools, Powerbars, water, etc.. in preparation for the really long adventure to begin the next day. We were off to bed.

Thursday AM we trailered to the border and unloaded the race car, then continue on to the starting line. Mike was driving with Rory doing the co-rider chores. At approx 12:30 they left the line. The 3 chase vehicles hit the highway, well it was more like a parking lot. By the time we finally left TJ, we heard the race car had already passed mile 50 or so. Once we actually hit the open road it got a little better. We headed through Mexicali and cruized south on Hwy 5 tword San Felipe. We stopped at the Hwy 3 intersection and filled up the dump cans for the fuel stop we had planned for the Borrego pits. Tony and Ryan went to meet the race car there, and I continued on in Rory's Bronco. Dave and St.Pat also continued tword San Felipe in the gas truck (Mike's big 4 door Ford with the empty car trailer in tow). Tony and Ryan had a bit of a delay on their way to the Borrego pits, as there had been a head on collision on the highway about 1 minute in front of them, very scary, the word was 3 people killed!!! This was the first Baja 1000 for these guy's, and they were getting a real taste of what can and does happen down here. After fueling up the race car they too continued on down the road tword the next pit stop.

I arrive at the Santa Maria pit area between San Felipe and Puertocitos, find the BFG pits and check for a status on the race car. They had not heard from them, and did not think they were due in for a while. The Goodyear Tractor-trailer rig was also pitted there, so I went and talked with Little Joe and all my Goodyear buddies for a few minutes. I decided to get suited up and ready, in case the race car called. No sooner had I started getting dressed, when we heard they were in San Felipe. Oh boy, they are really flying !! As I get ready, I asked the BFG pits to get some fuel cans filled, they didn't believe me at first, how could a Class 5 car be comming in already ? The pit went really smooth, I jumped in to relieve Rory, they fueled us up and sent us on our way. We barely went 20 miles and got a front flat. I jumped out and switched the tire and we were off again. Just as we approached the pavement we got a second flat tire, this one in the rear. We radioed to Dave and St.Pat who were heading our direction. With help from the guys at Baja Pits we had the car jacked up and the tires off. When Dave and St.Pat got there they just threw on the fresh tires and we blasted off again. That was the last time we talked to our chase vehicles on the radio for the rest of the race.

The next few pits were fairly uneventful, everything was going along quite smoothly. The chase vehicles had to follow the race course for approx 70 miles from Puertocitos to Coco's corner, which was a pretty good road, but put them several hours behind schedule. Mike and I thought it might not have been the best idea as we were driving it in the race car, but we were already committed, having brought the chase cars down to San Felipe. We saw the aftermath of another head-on collision as we approached San Ignacio. Another dose of the realities of racing in Baja. When we arrived at the San Ignacio pit, we had beat the chase trucks, so our intended driver change could not happen. Both Mike and I were feeling good, so we continued on. I was ready to finish the entire race, and Mike really wanted to drive the entire thing solo, so it was O.K. Dave was there as a back up, just in case Mike needed some relief. Off we went into the dark heading for the coast (west this time).

The San Juacinto pit was our next stop. As we were blasting down the section of the course that had these severe washouts, we slammed one of them and launched the car. Upon landing we broke the right rear torsion bar. With the Kuster coilover shocks in the rear, it was not a big problem. At the San Juacinto pit we had them crank up the right rear coil spring a few inches to compensate, and it worked perfectly. We heard them say that another Class 5 car was comming in, so we took off to maintain our lead. After talking and stratagizing the next section, I radioed back to the BFG pit to see how much time we had on the 2nd place car. They told us they hadn't even gotten to the pits yet. Mike and I started to relax, realizing that we had at least a 45 minute lead.

We then came upon the little town of La Purisma. The course diced through town and headed out on this little dirt road continuing our trek south tword La Paz. As we passed a little pit with 2 or 3 teams (mostly motorcycle pits) the course dropped down into a small valley. We crested the road and right in front of us was a silver Toyota pickup truck heading right at us, in the middle of the road. Mike swerved right to avoid a full head on with the truck, The Toyota hit our rear wheel and spun us around. We slid off the course into a big pile of rocks and boulders, fipping several times and totalling the car. The Toyota never even stopped or looked back. The locals that were there told us they had been waving the truck to move over, but to no avail. They also told us that the person driving the truck was the local Policia (I am not 100% sure that it was. We may have misinterpreted the message, but they seemed to be telling us that we hit the Policia !!)

We luckilly walked away from this, since crashing on boulders does wonders to the car. The cage was broken above the passenger side of the car, the rear of the chassis was destroyed, both intake manifolds were busted as well as the fan, exaust, and linkage. Up front, the pin and heim joints that work as our tierod ends were busted and ripped apart. The wheel was bent all the way to the brake rotor, as well as shredding the front tire. The front beam was bent and the connection from the sterring arm to the spindle was cracked. The poor car was just thrashed.

Here went our win at the Baja 1000, as well as the points championship, and major, major expense and energy for Mike to get his car back together. All this because of something that should never even be a factor in auto racing. Off road racing has enough unknowns, without having to worry about vehicles driving the wrong way on the race course. To top this all off we could not reach anyone on the radio. The SCORE Medical frequency, was not answering at all. We found out later that the Weatherman (who does this all on his own, donating his time and $$ for us racers, with no $ support from SCORE), was not up in the airplane relaying mesages until 3 or 4 hours after our incedent. We did reach BFG relay and asked them to relay for us, but never got confirmation from them, whether or not the message got out. They confirmed with me that we were out of the race, and our location, but I never knew if they talked to our crew. I repaired the front end of the car, good enough to tow it out to the highway. Mike walked up the course and found Danny Fodrill and Jim Pierce who were waiting for their Class 10 car to come through. They towed us the 30 miles out to the highway.

We sat with the car alongside Hwy 1, Danny left us some munchies and water and headed on down the road. Within 15-20 minutes, St.Pat and Tony in the gas truck, came rolling down the road on their way to La Paz. They pulled over and we told them what happened, and we all pushed the car up onto the trailer. They had heard nothing on the radio about the accident. We tried and tried to reach Dave and Ryan on the radio. We finally decided to head north tword Mulege for the night. As we started up the road we heard from Dave in the Bronco. We told them where we were and waited on the side of the road for them to catch up. We arrived in Mulege, found a room and had some dinner, what a long long day!!!

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This page was updated last on November 15th 1995.