We didn’t think we were going to be able to the race the 2018 Baja 1000 since we were fortunate enough to race it last year, but when the boys from 3P Off Road called and asked us to join them we sure didn’t say no! Who doesn’t want to race the Baja 1000? So, we loaded up the chase truck and the chase RZR and headed across the border. 

We arrived just in time for tech and contingency. What a great time we had there! Hanging out with our race family is one of our favorite things to do.

The 1877 Polaris breezed through tech and we headed for tacos and last minute prep on the car before bed. It was almost race day!

Race day came early and we packed our trucks full with snacks, sandwiches and spare parts. Some of the crew headed to the start line while the rest of us headed down the peninsula to wait for the car to reach that side and over to Ojos to catch the car on the other side.

We reached our spot in time to see some of the big cars and trucks go by and all the side x sides including ours. The car looked great and raced on while we headed to the next road crossing. We chased the car across the desert catching them at every road crossing we could just to ensure they were all good. At race mile 150, Travis Herzing and I would take over driver and co driver duties through the San Felipe whoops down past Porticeto.

We have raced this section of track before and knew we were in for a rough ride! There were 130 miles of whoops, super soft sand and more whoops! We battled a couple of BC cars and a few trucks through the dust. As we were bouncing over the whoops the transmission popped out of gear a few times. We came to the spot where I would get out and Philip would get in and the crew found a major problem with the transmission. We had a spare so they went to work and changed it out. At that time I had put an hour on the 2nd place car behind us but we were losing that quickly as the work was being done.

Philip and Travis took off to try and make up time. We stayed back to ensure the car made it down to the other side of the peninsula where Josh, Parker, Zach, Joe, Kenny and Mike would chase them back up to Ensenada. We sent Russell and Ryan in the chase RZR to follow the race car for about a 100 miles where we knew the roads had recently been washed out.

A  few driver changes, a few broken clutches and flat tire later the boys were heading back to us at Ojos just 30 miles to the finish when disaster struck! Thanks to Racingtrax, we found out that they had broken a radius rod and then a shock. The chase RZR had a shock and we had a radius rod, so we left from opposite sides and met Josh and Zach out on the track to make repairs. As we were getting them up and running the 2nd place car went by! We finished up and sent them on their way to the finish line! We all headed back to Ensenada to meet them and celebrate our 3rd place finish. It was hard fought and well deserved!

We can’t thank 3P Off Road enough for inviting us to be part of this great race!