Race Report: San Felipe 250
16 hour drive from northern Utah to San Felipe, not including time lost at the border crossing. We drove all night to get there weds mid day. First through pre-tech and off to give the truck a pre-run and test the new fuel injection system at sea level. (We live at nearly 6000 ft.) well 10 miles into the run the transmission fails. So we tow it back to the campground and pull the trans out and apart. We drive all night to Culhane's trans shop in Lake Elsinore (including a couple hours of special attention by US customs at the border). Steve hooks us up with the trans repair by 1:00 pm and we're off! (to wait in line at the GDamn border) . We accidentally wound up in the lane for the duty free store where they pretty much held us hostage till we bought a huge bottle of Jack Daniels in their store. Ok so back to San Felipe by 7:30. Had to embarrassingly tow our transmission-less race truck through contingency and tech. Well now it's getting late. I've got a 270 mile race to drive in the morning, so my crew orders me to go get some sleep. My sleep is interrupted in the wee hours by the sound of my awesome crew starting the truck up to fill the trans fluid and quick check to make sure it works. Maybe not the best thing for a crowded campground, but damn it we're racers so shut your pie-hole! You're in Mexico! Sleep all day!
Ok wake up raceday morning.. go get an ice pack for the back because I slept in the damn truck! Too busy to set up the tent! (Yes.. tent...budgetary issues). So Chris and I strap in and head for staging and starting.
We get to our turn for the green flag and notice that the flag man who will be starting us is Greg from Raceline Wheels! Our sponsor! Oh it's on now! I'm gonna burn rubber so hard off that line. This truck leaves so hard.. it will nearly pull a friggin wheelie! .... but... not this time... this time it coughs and chuggs off the line barely accelerating at all! How embarrassing. Well at least it clears out and ran like a fire breathing dragon once we rounded the first corner and we're out of the view of Greg and the big under-impressed crowd! So now we're blasting along in the choking dust picking off trucks and buggies one by one. The truck feels perfect. It's a whoop eating beastie! At about rm 18 we had passed most of the trucks in our class and were aware that we were likely leading now at least by corrected time. Chris and I were discussing the lack of visibility in the dust and cut the speed back a bit to manage risk. At rm 24.3 in fairly unremarkable terrain, cruising at about 70 mph the left front wheel popped off.
It's amazing how your brain slows time.. you have time for all these thoughts while you're in the process of eating shit! I had the failure fully diagnosed and I think I even predicted the rollover to Chris between the time the wheel popped off and the time the truck dug in and rolled! Well we won the Baja 24. Again!
So we'll rebuild, my awesome crew and I! Well come back bigger and better. Why? Because we're sick sons of... well... you know! 2900 miles on my chase truck for 1little race. I'm not going to proofread this. Typed on my phone in a power outage. Thanks Michele Burman, Chris Sayre, Billy Light, Lehi Wilkerson, Michael John Will Jr.
James Burman
