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Team Moto X Nutrition
2nd in Baja 500 and Retains Points Lead for
Championship
Team MotoX Nutrition Baja 500 ATV |
We have made our way back up North from the
2010 Tecate SCORE Baja 500! Our week in
Mexico went rather well, we managed to get our
pre-running and finale race bike shake down done
early in the week and every thing seemed to be
working quite well. This left us
pre-running the start on Thursday, contingency &
sign up on Friday. All went well we had
our pre-race riders meeting on Friday evening
and we were set.
The race started off well, with Nick Nelson
making his way physically to the front of
our class and right on the heals of class 25
which starts in front of our Class 24 by the
time we made our first rider Change @ Race mile
37 in Ojos Negros. From there it was time
for our bike builder Kenny Sanford of S&S
Motorsports to get on the bike. This was
Kenny's first time on the bike during a race
down there since he first started supporting our
team in 2008. So with this he would be
playing double duty by both riding as part of
the team as well as taking care of the bike as
lead mechanic. Kenny had a few pre-race
jitters but I felt that he would do well
regardless, once he got on the bike. The
pit and rider swap went well and he was off and
making dust as well as eating a fair amount too.
This early in the race all the competition is
fairly tight so there is a tremendous amount of
dust to deal with. Kenny got out and
started charging immediately and quickly caught
a couple of dirt bike's that had went by during
our short pit. A hard right hander snuck
up on him while doing 60 plus and eating dust.
He then found him self and the bike wrapped up
in what has since been labeled the "Barbed-Wire
Straight Jacket". This guy works wonders
of magic with building our race bike's and his
talent doesn't stop there, as he pulled off his
best Houdini maneuver to get him self freed up
from a seemingly hopeless situation. He
then untangled the quad and fortunately both he
and our race machine weren't any worse for ware
other than a few scratches and wounded pride.
Kenny then remounted the quad and showed the
same amount of heart and determination that he
showed in building the machine. He charged
hard never giving up a single position during
the remainder of his ride to Race Mile 96 and
passed one of the Class 25 bikes on his way too
boot.
When we put Jorie Williams on the
bike at RM96 we had roughly 6 minutes on the
rest of our class and were keeping Class 25
honest. Jorie made great time over the
summit, however as he was heading into the rough
stuff he noticed that the dry break on top of
the gas tank was leaking terribly. He
stopped several times and either was able to
make it stop or he had lost enough fuel that it
wasn't coming out any more. I tend to
believe it was the latter, as he was on the lake
bed a mile and a half from the pit physically
passing into 4th overall quad position and ran
out of gas. He tried raising our pit by
radio with no luck. Fortunately for us
this kid has no quit in him and he immediately
started pushing the quad with every thing he
had. The pit eventually saw him a came to
his aide. They got the machine fueled up,
made a quick duct tape fix to the cap on the dry
break that we would have to replace at each pit
for the remainder of the race.
Micheal
Kelley got on the bike and went to work.
We lost an hour and change during this mishap
and slipped back to 15th overall and 10th in
class, so at this point every rider would be
required to ride their hearts out the remainder
of the day to try and salvage a decent finish
and as many points as possible for the
championship standings. Micheal had a good
run to Borrego and I got on and took a bath in
the fuel leaking out of the dry break till San
Matias where we had to change out a tire and
up-grade our duct tape dry break cap. From
this point Micheal got back on and road his butt
off to the Valley De Trinidad pit.
An
extremely fired up Jorrie Williams got back on
the bike at this point and hung it out over the
cross to the Pacific side at San Vicente where
we were finally starting to see that we were
making our way up in the standings Nick
Nelson waded his way through several more riders
on the coast section in route to Santo Thomas.
I would then get on for the final leg of the
race and make my way back over to Ojos Negros
then into Ensenada for the finish. When I
got on the bike Kenny let me know on the radio
that I was physically 10 min behind 2nd place
which on corrected time made it 17 minutes so I
new all I could do was charge hard and see how
the cards fell.
We lucked out due to attrition as the team
that was leading broke an axle on their way from
Uruapan to Ojos so that put us in 2nd. We
had a quick and flawless pit in Ojos for our
final pit stop and I made my way to the finish
line from there. We ended up 2nd in class
for the day just 12 minutes and 45 seconds
behind 1st and 6th over all quad. This
keeps us in a solid 1st place in the point
standings for the Class 24 Championship.
I am genuinely proud of my team and pit support
crews for their never give up approach under the
adversity that we experienced during this race.
It is this kind of perseverance that wins
championships and I am confident that we will be
duking it out for the overall near future.
Words: Brandon Brown (Quad75)
Thanks to all of our sponsors that made this
effort possible!
Moto X Nutrition, S&S Motorsports, Quad75.Com,
Klim, Fox Racing Shox, Teixeira Tech, Maxxis,
Hiper Technology, Rekluse, IMS, PWR, Wiseco,
Maxima, FullBore, Spider Grips, Power Madd,
Crower Power, UPP, Trail Tech, Scott, Bling
Star, UNI, MotoSport Hillsboro, Pirate
Insurance, SCR Graphics, TCS, Precision Racing
Products, Hot Rod Bill, Mark Garrett, Water Well
Developing, Kelley Blocks.
Support Crew
Paulina Nelson, Michelle (The Cookie Lady),
Kelly Sanford, Mike Kelley II, Bill Nelson, Brad Aboltin, Chino & Kenny Sanford!
Riders
Brandon Brown, Jorie Williams, Kenny Sanford,
Nick Nelson & Micheal Kelley III
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