The Long Shot: November 2007

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We Drove Like Hell: Notes from Baja 1000

I raced in the 2007 Baja 1000 last week in the Full Stock truck class with the Rod Hall Race Team, and this week I pay the price. My neck is torqued, my back is bent, my eyeballs googly and internal organs intermittently backflowing. I see strange patterns on walls.

The desert terrain – 1,296 miles from Encenada to Cabo San Lucas – was unimaginably brutal. Lead driver Josh Hall’s day job is training the Special Forces in tactical driving and for Josh (the oldest son of Rod Hall, who is the winningest and wisest Baja racer of all time) the Baja 1000 is war. And war is hell.

Our front differential exploded at mile 380, just after dawn on Wednesday, knocking out the truck. We'd just climbed and descended the rocky, craggy summit of Coyote Mountain, which was a junkyard of broken machinery and dazed drivers stumbling around their rigs. Before the diff cracked, we passed dozens of trucks, buggies, bugs, and bikes. We were on a tear. We would have owned own our class.

Here's what the race feels like: A 10-hour-long airplane crash. The beating you take is unbelievable. It's a miracle I didn't puke the whole way, or that my aorta didn't separate from my heart over the hoopties. Just two hours in, I was so physically exhausted from the abuse that I found myself struggling to keep my eyes open as I called out turns.

Meanwhile, lots of weird details, mostly in fragments: We nearly had a head-on collision at 85 mph with a pickup truck driven the wrong way down the course by a drunken Mexican. We also absorbed dozens of hurled beer bottles - some full - and rocks as we surged through thick crowds of spectators and cactii. We passed a lot of crashed race trucks, bugs, buggies, trophy trucks, etc - even a helicopter, which hit a power line over the course at mile 130 when we were at mile 100, and crashed right onto the track. Three occupants died in the wreck, with many more people rumored to be hurt on the ground. We passed the scene so fast all I could process was a smoldering black wreck with chopper blades. In a bizarre coda to the crash, a gang of heavily armed thugs later broke into the morgue in Encenada, stole the bodies of the dead occupants, and killed two policemen as they escaped.

The Mexicans love their spectating. It was unnerving to race full out through the crowds at the start as people leaned their camera phones into the track to get a good shot. I saw at least one person leaning out taking a photo with the camera in his laptop. Not sure how many people lost their hands, arms, not to mention their lives. The tracks were sometimes very narrow, and the trucks traveling up to 125 mph. Authorities are calling it the bloodiest Baja 1000 ever, and almost stopped the race 12 hours into it.

Stay tuned for the next installment, "The Many Vile Days of Dakar.”