With the moon like a spotlight over our pit stop in the desert, I had one question on my mind: “Do I wipe the headlights or offer them water first?” But I couldn’t ask anyone because my voice had been gone, and the rest of the team was prepping for their far more serious tasks.
All I knew for certain was that I was now a part of the Alsup Racing team—in the most minimal way possible—and I should be prepared for a Can-Am Maverick R to roll up in any condition imaginable.
But this isn’t where my story chasing the Baja 1000 starts. In fact, I was already 20 hours deep. And although I’d been a fly on the wall with Polaris’ factory team when it took the win at the San Felipe 250, this experience was a different animal entirely.
It was like you and your best friends had been tasked with performing a controlled explosion of the largest building in the city. Each person has a job, but you’re all flying by the seat of your pants and, literally, anything could go wrong at any time.
That might be selling the Alsup Racing Development team short as it was by no means their first Baja 1000. Even the chase team was made up of former drivers and navigators who’d raced the 1000, but to see a group of men and women, who for 51 weeks of the year have completely normal jobs, do this was astonishing.
But they’re by no means a factory team. So when I saw the folks not just take on the Baja 1000, but take it to the ground and choke it out until the bell rang, my heart was with them.
And I had to learn one of the biggest differences between a 250-mile off-road race and one that’s four times longer.
The chase is its own race.
Race Of The Chase
In the off-road racing world, the chase vehicle never wants to be behind the race vehicle, as the objective is to be one step ahead and take the best place possible to get set up to help. The only problem is, every other team wants the same thing.
So, although my day started before dawn, and hours before the UTV set off, it wasn’t a leisurely ride to the first pit stop location. It was a race against the other teams. Based on the speeds we were hitting and the time we set off, I was sure we’d have a virtually untapped pick of prime locations.
Yet, by the time we found a suitable pit-stop site, we were the second team there, and just a few minutes later another two trucks pulled up behind us. This was a game of minutes. If you’re lagging behind a direct competitor, and they get the best spot, it could cost your team precious seconds or minutes.
In the end, that’s all that separates the top positions.
I felt the tension from the chase of the race throughout. But once we found a suitable spot, it was a “hurry up and wait” situation, as the team gets a brief cessation from the stress of the race, and time to snack and hydrate because now the most important part of the job is about to begin.
All Hands At The Ready
Larger, louder, and far more expensive vehicles began to pass by our pit stop. As the number of cylinders under the hood of the trucks and buggies became fewer, I could feel the focus of the crew in the chase truck intensify. We knew we were about to see the Alsup Maverick R round the corner any moment.
With all eyes fixed on the turn behind us, the Alsup UTV appeared. It roared straight past us, and that was the best outcome we could’ve hoped for. Like a controlled explosion, you have to account for all the possible ways things can go wrong, and that’s exactly what we were doing.
This was a precautionary pit stop rather than a mandatory one. We were just there in case any unforeseen problems came up in the first 100 or so miles. Now, it was on to the first mandatory pits top, and tensions were rising.
We only narrowly beat the race vehicle to the first mandatory pit stop a short while later. Luckily another chase truck from the team was there before us and had everything ready to go. The amount of people it takes to make a serious play for success at the Baja 1000 is crazy. I was in four chase trucks throughout the day, with two to four team members in each, and it was barely enough to keep up with the UTV, even though we had the use of all the highway roads.
But this team was full of overachieving members. The only issue I could see, as a fly on the wall, is that not every team member knew each other, and some had different approaches to tackle the same problem.
With the UTV fast approaching, the team had to agree on a game plan to make the process as efficient as possible, and under extremely tense circumstances. Everything from the order of what parts to check on the vehicle to whether to hand water bottles open or closed is agreed upon beforehand.
While I watched the team do everything they could to stay professional but make the compromises they had to, I thought I was about to lose my life as a trophy truck came off the racing line, barreling toward me at full tilt before a last-second turn of the wheel left. It was pitting next to us, but I didn’t know that. And considering two bystanders had tragically lost their lives in a freak incident involving two trophy trucks less than 24 hours earlier, I had a reason to be on edge.
Then, before I had time to process how close I’d come to being clipped by a fender, our UTV had come, refueled, had mechanical checks, the drivers were given updates, and it was gone.
The first pit stop in the books, and we were on course for a podium finish, until we weren’t.
Murphy’s Law
Murphy’s Law states “Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong”, and do you know what can go wrong? Electrics.
We hadn’t finished packing up from the first pit stop before a message came through the radio that the vehicle was losing power, and the driver was instructed to pull over and methodically run through every possible source of the problem. More than flat-out driving, this was a true test of staying calm under pressure because rushing this process could've been a disaster.
As the top racers in the class pulled further and further away, Alsup’s team was wondering whether its UTV would be running again in minutes or hours, but after about 10 to 15 minutes, the engine roared back into life, and we were playing catch up.
Don’t Rob Us
Only the moon lit the surroundings as I rallied to the next pit stop with a new-to-me chase crew. The roads are essentially lawless for the 20-odd hours that the Baja 1000 runs, in the sense that the police don’t stop teams for speeding or for generally not abiding by the rules of the road.
The only times I saw police vehicles were when we passed an overturned 18-wheeler and another accident involving race buggies. But when you’re driving so close to the limit to catch up with your race vehicle, not having to worry about a speeding fine is a blessing.
In the middle of the desert, all I could hear was our GMC Sierra 2500 HD pleading for its life, which isn’t an easy thing to do. But it had one of the biggest trailers I’d ever seen hooked up to a truck, carrying the pre-running UTV, fuel for the next pit stop, emergency fuel, and thousands of dollars worth of gear.
At one point, while we were driving about as fast as possible, another truck managed to pull up alongside us with a passenger motioning for us to engage in conversation. I started to wish there were a few more police trucks on the road. But the driver of my chase truck was a former Marine, US Army sniper instructor, and current police officer, and we had joked earlier about how we were in the safest chase vehicle in Baja California. It wasn’t feeling like a joke anymore.
Luckily, the driver of the other vehicle had no malicious intent—quite the opposite. They were alerting us to the fact that one of the trailer tires had blown out and, from where they were sitting, the situation looked bad. Before I knew what was happening, the crew had taken off the wheel, strapped up the axle with tie-downs, and unloaded the pre-running UTV to relieve the failing trailer of some stress.
Our truck had the pre-running UTV in case we needed to drive out to a hard-to-reach spot and rescue the race vehicle. But now we were in need of rescue, as we were limping through the Mexican desert in the middle of the night about to lose more wheels.
But this is a controlled explosion, and once you hit the ignition, you’ve got to see it through.
The One Thing That Didn’t Break
By the time we offloaded the trailer and pre-runner and made it to the next pit stop, the desert cold had set in. Although it was a frosty 26 degrees Fahrenheit, it felt much colder as we waited for the Maverick R to pull in for its last pit stop of the race.
A major mechanical problem was the last thing we needed, but remember Murphy’s Law.
Tempers were paper thin, so I stayed as far out of the way as possible. There was a serious problem with a CV joint which, if not fixed, would’ve prevented the team from crossing the finish line. Before I could fully understand the issue, a sort of factory line had formed, and it seemed like people from other teams were even helping us.
At this point, no one wanted to see any competitor fall at the last pit stop, and after 20 minutes of hammering, pulling, and kicking pieces into place. The Maverick R set off on its last run of the race, and by this stage, I was broken. Some kind of sickness had taken hold; the cold was in my bones, and my voice was completely gone. I wasn’t the only one.
The team had planned for every eventuality they could think of, but in the end, the UTV broke twice, the main trailer broke, and even one of the driver’s helmet’s fresh-air systems broke leaving him looking like a character from Pineapple Express. But the team, as a whole, never broke, and these folks don’t get paid to be here. They pay to be here.
The team members use their own vehicles, money, and PTO to get down and race the Baja 1000. I’d call them a team of demolition experts because that’s what this race is, a demolition of machinery and people. If the team fell apart, even for a moment, it would be crushed by the weight of the road ahead. But it didn’t.
Thanks to the team staying calm and meeting every problem with composure, they finished fourth in the Pro Open UTV category despite all the problems that cropped up throughout, and only missed out on a podium spot by about two minutes.
But, if anything, that makes me more excited to see how this Alsup Racing tackles the pieces of flying debris that the Baja 1000 will throw at them in 2025.
