2006 BAJA 500
Where to start. We met up with Dave Hendrickson who is a one man show and runs Dave Co. fabrication. He is a multi winning baja champion, built over 27+ class11 racers, has over 30+ years of racing experience and is friends with so many people in desert racing.
Well after our initial meet with Dave, he invited us to help him as part of his pit crew for the Baja 500! What an honor! We jumped at the chance, prepared for the next weekend and headed down Thursday night.
We helped him prep the car as much as we could with the help of his co-driver Brian Calliara who made a cross country trip from NY to race with Dave. It was pretty amazing to see it all go into action. We basically helped them install the entire transmission, assemble the engine, hook up and align suspension and mounts, along with about a thousand smaller tasks. (In all honesty, Angelo and I really just helped where they asked. These guys knew what they were doing. It was pretty amazing to see it all go down). This took us Thursday night into the wee hours, all the way till Friday. We had maybe 2-3 hours sleep.
After the car was finally all race prepped and ready to go, we got to take a few spins around the block (and wake up the neighborhood in the process) and off we went to the Mexico border! We picked up some Mexico auto insurance from a drive-thru window right before the border. Yup…drive-thru insurance. Crossed the border no problem and headed to Ensenada.
Our base camp was at Estero Beach. Which is about 15 minutes south of Ensenada. We finished the final race prep and stocking the car with goodies and off they went to the race inspection and starting line. We stayed behind, grabbed gas, and headed to the first race checkpoint at Ojos Negros.
We saw Dave tear through Ojos Negros passing up everyone else in the Class11 cars. There were a total of 7 entries in Class11 this year, and Dave started third at the start line. By the time he hit the first checkpoint, we had already passed them all and was about 10 minutes ahead of the next closest bug.
Unfortunately this is where it all started to go bad. We got to the second pit stop which was at San Catarina. When we got there, there were multiple people who came up to us telling us that our car had broken down between here and Ojos and that they would be towed back to Ojos and were out of the race. Bummer…
We head back to Ojos and on the way stop for a breather since we had basically not slept since we got down to mexico. When our mini-break was over, we go to get back on the road and our chase truck wouldn’t start! Lucky for us a random tow service stopped and helped us out. Too bad, we lost a few hours waiting for him to fix the problem since they were helping another broken down car which parked right next to us. (turns out it was a loose ground on the secondary battery that was causing the problem.) With our truck functioning again, we hit the road to pick up the broken racer.
Well, we got back to Ojos and couldn’t find the car. We looked high and low for hours and found nothing. We decided to head back to base camp and see if they made it back there. No sign of them. We decide to take a small break and wait. At something like 2am Dave comes rolling up with some random Mexicans in a truck. He managed to get their help towing him back to the road and then giving him a ride back to camp to meet back up with us.
We all convoy back down to Ojos again and find Brian sitting in the racer by the side of the road sleeping patiently for us. We toss the car into the trailer and make the trek back to camp for a quick bite to eat and story swapping. Turns out that one of the valve springs broke. We didn’t have a spare for that part and that would have involved removing the engine to get to the part anyway which was not really an option given the time constraints of the race.
Slightly rested (but not really), we pack everything up and head back across the border. Quite the adventure! Thanks to Dave and Brian for letting us tag along on such a great trip. Also thanks to Robbie (Dave’s son) for all of his knowledge and advice. It was a great experience and hopefully we can get the chance to ride with them again for the Baja 1000.
Well after our initial meet with Dave, he invited us to help him as part of his pit crew for the Baja 500! What an honor! We jumped at the chance, prepared for the next weekend and headed down Thursday night.
We helped him prep the car as much as we could with the help of his co-driver Brian Calliara who made a cross country trip from NY to race with Dave. It was pretty amazing to see it all go into action. We basically helped them install the entire transmission, assemble the engine, hook up and align suspension and mounts, along with about a thousand smaller tasks. (In all honesty, Angelo and I really just helped where they asked. These guys knew what they were doing. It was pretty amazing to see it all go down). This took us Thursday night into the wee hours, all the way till Friday. We had maybe 2-3 hours sleep.
After the car was finally all race prepped and ready to go, we got to take a few spins around the block (and wake up the neighborhood in the process) and off we went to the Mexico border! We picked up some Mexico auto insurance from a drive-thru window right before the border. Yup…drive-thru insurance. Crossed the border no problem and headed to Ensenada.Our base camp was at Estero Beach. Which is about 15 minutes south of Ensenada. We finished the final race prep and stocking the car with goodies and off they went to the race inspection and starting line. We stayed behind, grabbed gas, and headed to the first race checkpoint at Ojos Negros.
We saw Dave tear through Ojos Negros passing up everyone else in the Class11 cars. There were a total of 7 entries in Class11 this year, and Dave started third at the start line. By the time he hit the first checkpoint, we had already passed them all and was about 10 minutes ahead of the next closest bug.Unfortunately this is where it all started to go bad. We got to the second pit stop which was at San Catarina. When we got there, there were multiple people who came up to us telling us that our car had broken down between here and Ojos and that they would be towed back to Ojos and were out of the race. Bummer…
We head back to Ojos and on the way stop for a breather since we had basically not slept since we got down to mexico. When our mini-break was over, we go to get back on the road and our chase truck wouldn’t start! Lucky for us a random tow service stopped and helped us out. Too bad, we lost a few hours waiting for him to fix the problem since they were helping another broken down car which parked right next to us. (turns out it was a loose ground on the secondary battery that was causing the problem.) With our truck functioning again, we hit the road to pick up the broken racer.Well, we got back to Ojos and couldn’t find the car. We looked high and low for hours and found nothing. We decided to head back to base camp and see if they made it back there. No sign of them. We decide to take a small break and wait. At something like 2am Dave comes rolling up with some random Mexicans in a truck. He managed to get their help towing him back to the road and then giving him a ride back to camp to meet back up with us.
We all convoy back down to Ojos again and find Brian sitting in the racer by the side of the road sleeping patiently for us. We toss the car into the trailer and make the trek back to camp for a quick bite to eat and story swapping. Turns out that one of the valve springs broke. We didn’t have a spare for that part and that would have involved removing the engine to get to the part anyway which was not really an option given the time constraints of the race.
Slightly rested (but not really), we pack everything up and head back across the border. Quite the adventure! Thanks to Dave and Brian for letting us tag along on such a great trip. Also thanks to Robbie (Dave’s son) for all of his knowledge and advice. It was a great experience and hopefully we can get the chance to ride with them again for the Baja 1000. 
posted by Butt0r at 4:44 PM
1 Comments:
It was an awesome experience to say the least! The baja 1000 is coming up soon and we have been invited to go along. We should probably ask for the time off already, so that they for sure can't say anything when the moment of truth arrives!
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