2011 Baja 1000 – take two

Tim Smith’s Florida Vintage Racing team is tackling the 44th Baja 1000. For me this is my second time participating in this and very excited to be doing so.

The race starts officially on Friday Nov 18th. This year it is 692.82 miles in length, starts and ends in Ensenada and has a time limit of 32 hrs … meaning, the team has 32 hrs to complete the course, or the race is over.

For me the race began a couple of weeks ago with some mild helping … Ok, real mild helping <g>. For Tim and Dennis, the race began longer ago, with lots of prep for the race Jeep.

The real beginning of the race for me, began with prepping our truck for chasing, towing and driving in the desert about 3 weeks ago … our race, would include driving the truck from Florida to Mexico, towing the race Jeep behind us and bringing everything back … Abuelo (my dad) is the real worker and genius, he’s spent the last 3 weeks changing brakes, shocks, wiring lights, packing trailer bearings and multiple other tasks … I only hope that when I get to be in my 70s, I am half as capable as he is.

Our role is Mexico will be to support the race Jeep and the team, this is typically called chasing … as we try to follow the race Jeep around the course, getting in front of it to provide food, support, change of crews, etc …

I’ll try to post something everyday, trying to share this adventure with friends and family.

Here’s a couple of web sites to look into to learn more …

www.score-international.com – official race website.

www.race-desertz.com – popular desert racing website which will have live updates of the race. They will also have a live radio relay, so you should be able to listen to race radio traffic

www.racetheworld.net – IRC is the company that provides the “tracker” for the race vehicles. The race Jeep will have an IRC tracker and you will be able to follow the progress of the Jeep on this site. The Jeep this year is number 1502.

More tomorrow … tonight we are in Calexico, CA. Waiting to cross into Mexico at Mexicali and then make our remaining 180 miles to our race headquarters in Ensenada.