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By: Robert Janis
Preparation,
Experience Help Afraidium Racing Win SCORE
Points Championship for 2008
Continued from
page 1...
Running the Races
As previously noted, Lindsay and Holdsworth
competed in the Baja 500 and Baja 1000 this past
season. The 500 was the first race.
Lindsay described the race:
“Moving out of town to start the race was fun.
There were a lot of people. Then, once we got
out of town a ways, we reached the mountain pass
called The Summit. There were a lot of really
nasty rocks there. So it was slow moving. You
have to pick lines and be extremely careful.
“We made it through The Summit, and then we came
upon sandy washes and silt beds of the Delabo
Lake Bed. Once we got into the sand washes, I
thought that the car was a little off. I wasn’t
sure what it was, but I suspected that we had
broken a sway bar. So we went in for a pit stop
at mile 160, and we discovered that we had
broken a lower A-Arm. The crew pulled the A-Arm
off, welded and fixed it and put it back on the
UTV. We never had another issue for the rest of
the race.”
Lindsay drove from the start to mile 260 and
Holdsworth took the machine the rest of the way
and they won the 500.
Next was the Baja 1000. "No one in a UTV had
finished the 1000 before."
So our priority was
just to finish,” said Lindsay. “We learned a lot
from the 500, and we had made some suspension
changes to the UTV before hand that we thought
would help. So, we thought we were in pretty
good shape going into the race.
“But we miscalculated our spring rate,”
continued Lindsay. “The car was running really,
really well until mile 85 when we blew a belt.
While the belt was being replaced, we realized
that we had a broken A-Arm. We thought that the
A-Arm had broken due to a rock. So we changed
the A-Arm and took off.
“We immediately went through some nasty silk
beds,” continued Lindsay. “And when we got by
Romarosa near Mexicale, we encountered some
really nasty switch backs that go down into
nasty washes. There was a lot of rough terrain.
So, when we reached mile 190, we took a pit stop
to fuel up; and we noticed that we had broken
the A-Arm on the other side. So we swapped the
A-Arm out and tried to determine why the A-Arm
broke and figured it was the spring rate. So we
adjusted the springs and never had another A-Arm
issue again.”
Lindsay and Holdsworth finished third.
As mentioned, an A-Arm broke on the UTV in the
Baja 500. “The break was where it connected to
the frame of the vehicle,” explained Lindsay.
“And it was an odd break in a seam in the metal.
The A-Arms in the 1000 broke where the welds end
and where the shocks go down and join the A-Arm.
It snapped right there.”
Lindsay learned from this and had the size of
the A-Arms of the RZR beefed up and balanced
that out with proper spring rates, valving and
shocks. They worked with FST, a fabrication
company in Phoenix, Arizona, to make the fix.
They haven’t raced since the 1000 so they have
not had an opportunity to test the repairs. “We
have a pretty good idea that the fixes will
work, but we’re waiting until January to start
testing,” said Lindsay.
The win in the Baja 500 and the third place
finish in the Baja 1000 gave the team a final
point total score of 204. The next closest team
in the rankings was 40 points behind.
Lindsay and Holdsworth will be racing the same
Polaris RZR in the Baja 500 and 1000 in 2009.
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