Baja Race, November 30, 2008



A crazy race, indeed! It consisted of two parts: First a two hour race at the FRT asphalt track, starting at 5:00 am! The humidity was extreme -it had rained all day on Saturday- and most teams had problems with engines turning off due to the humidity. Almost all cars had lights of some sort. Even though there were 4-5 large strong spot lights above the drivers' rostrum, they could not shed light to the far reaches of the huge track. It made racing at least interesting!
The funny thing is I forgot my entire toolbox at home, but I didn't forget the lovely spinach pie my mother in law made for us the night before! Thankfully, Tassos who was also racing 1/10 nitro later on the same asphalt track, had his toolbox handy! Mind you we woke up at 3.30 am, then drove about 30-50km's to the track!

The dirt part of the race started at 08:00 am, the organizers giving us about one hour of break between the races. The track was muddy for the first one hour, then turned to extremely grippy dirt! We had our share of problems, breaking both front lower a-arms. I had one a-arm in my bag, and then we borrowed an aluminum one from a fellow racer (THANKS!) and continued until the 2:19 hrs of the race, when the pinion bolt snapped in the clutch bell, so we called it a day.

Overall we were all VERY excited. Not only us, but all the teams, too!



The asphalt video. This is on Youtube at 320X240.
I have the original WMV big file (74mb) at Rapidshare, for anyone interested in fairly good quality. It will open a new window.


The off road video.
Click to enlarge Click to enlarge Click to enlarge
CIMG3831
800 X 600
121 KB
CIMG3835
800 X 600
96 KB
CIMG3839
800 X 600
105 KB
04:55 am 04:56 am Lights on!
Click to enlarge Click to enlarge Click to enlarge
CIMG3842
800 X 600
114 KB
CIMG3843
800 X 600
105 KB
CIMG3844
800 X 600
101 KB
Click to enlarge Click to enlarge Click to enlarge
CIMG3845
800 X 600
105 KB
CIMG3848
800 X 600
134 KB
CIMG3849
800 X 600
165 KB
Engines started to turn off due to terrific humidity