Desert Dingo Racing

Tag: Chase Truck

  • Final pre-race update

    1101 with its tracking unit turned on parked at Jeff’s house at Pete’s Camp, a small community on the bearch just north of San Felipe.

    Just got off the phone with Mike and Seth. Everyones’ spirits are good, the car is ready to go and it’s about an hour before race start.

    Richard and Mike will be in 1101 off the start line (“It’s an all-diabetic start,” Seth says.) Somewhere around the top of the course they’ll switch out and Mike will drive to Route Mile 93 where they’ll hand the car off to Scott and Seth. Scott will drive first and somewhere around RM 160 Seth will take over, driving in the dark, and take it to the finish line.

    Seth reports that, for this race, we’ll actually have a jack in the car (we sort of overlooked that at the Baja 1000). Also the new intercom works “fabulous”, though I’ll miss the head butting and hand signals I used at the 1000 in the car with Cary.

    Our two chase trucks are fully outfitted and ready to go. We’ll be using Seth scratched up Ford and Jeff’s 70s era Scout. They picked up 27 gallons of 110 octane race fuel yesterday and divvied it between 1101 and fuel jugs in the two chase vehicles.

    Everyone went out to dinner last night at Playa del Oro and Seth had everyone tucked in to bed by midnight. Today’s high should be 80 degrees with slight overcast – perfect racing weather. We did see Eric Solorzano doing some pre-running and one other of the Class 11s.

    Because they won’t have internet connectivity on the course, I’ll be monitoring the car’s location and sending text messages to their sat phones at 15 minute intervals, relaying location and speed, so it will look something like “RM 33 – 28 mph”.

    Best updates are here and via the Twitter stream.

  • We’re ready

    Ok, so in a few hours there’s going to be a lot of text updates and not a lot of photos, so work with us here and appreciate the logistics required to support a race team in the Baja California Desert. Like Seth’s well-outfitted chase truck.

    Uh oh. Someone has some ‘splaining to do.

    We may be slow, but we’re ahead of that Stock Mini class truck. In tech, anyway.

    1101 in repose.

    Watch for Desert Dingo Baja Champion brand tires at a tire store near you.

  • Thursday afternoon progress report

    This update from Scott:

    Seth, Jeff & I set up our first pit & established a route to it that keeps us off the race course. The stop is near the famous mummified cow that marks the intersection between the roads to Laguna Diablo & Arco del Triunfo.

    Back at Jeff’s for lunch now, then off to set up our southerly pit #2 near the old Puertocitas road.

    Got a text message from Cary saying they’d passed the border at 2 PM, and asking had we seen Crusty. No sign of Crusty here, now at Jeff’s at 3:15.