2008 SCORE Baja 1000 Off Road Race - Riding Dirty

Back In The Saddle

After a disappointing race again last year, where Team Hummer's newly minted Hummer H2 SUT race truck suffered mechanical calamity before I was able to jump in it (Four Wheeler, May '08), I was determined to get in and race this year. After a personal invite from driver Josh Hall at SEMA, I made plans to meet the team in Ensenada for another Baja rendezvous.

After a team meeting of strategies and a final supper before a good night's sleep, I spent the first leg of the race chasing with the crew in our long-term Hummer H3 Alpha, before getting to BFG Pit 1 (at mile 147) to suit up for my ride. In this year's race, I would be getting in the third seat of Josh Hall's No. 863 Hummer H2 SUT and racing until BFG Pit 2, approximately 132 miles away.

At sundown on the northern edge of Laguna Salada, my ride arrived, where I hastily jumped in and enjoyed a nearly 100mph stint across the dry lakebed along the course. It wasn't long before we were passing other competitors before coming across a roadblock of stuck racers in the wash. After co-driver Sam Cothrun got out to run ahead of Josh through the thick brush, the Hummer pushed its way through the vehicular mess and back on course, where we were holding steady to First Place. Chad Hall, also in our class in his No. 861 H3 Alpha, was not far behind us. As our lights cut through the thick dust and dark of night, we picked off one racer at a time with the H2 running strong.

While the H2 SUT handles the rough and fast with ease, it was the wickedness of the whoops this year that would do us in. After what seemed like an hour of the most brutal whoops you, or your guts, could imagine, I heard Josh report over the intercom that the truck was starting to run funny, wanting to die at low rpm. After discussing the problem amongst ourselves, we decided we'd have to pull off the course to further investigate our unexpected development.

With our First Place lead quickly evaporating, we pulled off the front tire, popped the hood and looked for everything we could to try and diagnose the problem. The first anomaly we noticed was the driver-side motor mount was missing its bolts, leading us to our second problem....

Over the unendingly brutal whoops section, the motor-mount bolts apparently loosened, dropping off into the desert abyss. This allowed the engine to move within the engine compartment on subsequent gyrations over the fluctuating terrain. Now, if you have ever looked inside the engine compartment of a Hummer H2, you'll know that the engine sits back, partially covered by the cowl. You'll also know that on the 6.2L engines, such as the one we were running in the race truck, that the computers sit on top of the intake plenum on mounts molded to the plastic intake.

About the time Josh was experiencing driveability problems was about the time we had driven over the whoops, causing the motor-mount bolts to drop free. As a result, the engine moved up in the engine compartment, damaging some wiring and causing the ECM to make contact with the cowl. That broke the mounts off the intake, resulting in holes in the intake plenum, which allowed sucking in dirty, unmetered air.

While Sam got to work borrowing bolts from the dash mount to the firewall to secure the motor mount, I got to work mixing up a concoction of epoxy to get the plenum temporarily repaired until we got to the next pit and it could be looked at again.

With the repairs completed, and over an hour of downtime experience, we fired up the H2 and got back in the race. After Josh and Sam dropped me off at pit 2, they had a few additional problems with the steering system, but remained competitive, eventually finishing third with a time of 24:50:06 and an average speed of 25.4 mph.

The rest of the family carried on the family tradition of success, with patriarch Rod Hall finishing in Second Place in Stock Mini on his 71st birthday with a time of 22:51:17 and an average speed of 27.6 mph, securing the season points championship and carrying forward the tradition of being the only person on four wheels to participate in every single Baja 1000 since the first race in 1967. Rod's other son, Chad, took home the trophy in Stock Full in his H3 Alpha with a time of 19:22:47, with an average speed of 32.6 mph for his seventh career class win and the Stock Full points championships.

--Sean P. Holman, Tech Editor

Hero: Coco
This year, the guy holding the checkered flag at the finish line was famed Coco of Coco's Corner. If you've seen the movie Dust to Glory, you know who Coco is. If not, just know that he's one of the many characters south of the border with a story of misfortune and perseverance. This former parking lot attendant lost one of his legs in a car accident years ago. Unable to find work with one limb absent, Coco left Ensenada to salvage whatever he could of his adult life. He ended up some 200 miles south of San Felipe in a place only Baja racers and lost adventurers could find. He calls it Coco's Corner, and he'll let you camp there for free. To the racers Coco represents a sanctuary in the middle of nowhere. Despite Coco's life struggles, his spirits remain high and his impression on Baja's legacy continues to evolve. Recently, Coco had to have his only remaining leg amputated due to health issues. As you can see here, that did inhibit his role as flagman at the 2008 Tecate SCORE Baja 1000.

Hero: Those Who Refuse To Give Up
The No. 7 Trophy Truck driven by Jimmy Knuckles, Scott Steinburger, and Mike Childress was running strong in fourth position when Childress hit a man-made booby trap at high speed, sending the truck into a horrific multi-rollover accident. When the dust cleared, Childress figured his chances of finishing the race were over. Then team owner Scott Steinburger dispatched his chase crews to the scene. After several hours of wrenching, the truck was rolling again. This photo shows the battered vehicle as it approached the finish line to secure a 15th Place finish some 24 hours after the truck left the starting line. While not the stellar podium results Steinburger was hoping for, the performance will forever go down in the history books for sponsor General Tire as the first SCORE Trophy Truck to finish the Baja 1000 on the new General Grabber race tire--a small yet significant upshot to not giving up.