Seeley Racing

Saturday, March 17, 2007

Dwight Forrell, post-race report [ SCORE '07 Baja 250 ]

Contingency and tech went well. Since I'm an early riser I woke everyone up around 6:30 am by taking a shower and making enough noise.
We were in line by 8:00/ 8:30 and done by 11:30 with the car fueled and ready to go. Made the BFG tire meeting then the Checkers tire meeting.....all of these on time...shocking most.
10:00am race day drove out Ave Ruiz and staged while waiting to start a business card is thrust through the front from Eric Record .....cool to see a fellow cheezer.
11:35ish were off...first 11 miles seemed to go quick and were on the hiway I'm calling out speeds as to not incur the dreaded "speed violation." Back on the course and on towards Ojos, getting close to Ojos,we are skirting the water and mud set up by the locals, on the paved road car 505 and Volker pass us as I'm telling George he's doing 67mph....at the end of the rollers I see 505 has spun but gathers it up to get going again with Volker passing him.
We keep there dust in sight and solider on.
Rm 53 is soft sand and we come along where Michelle Bruckman is standing on the hood of her car waving us around to the left...it's a single track here so we do some Ag racing.
Make the hard left at El Alamo and out to the hiway calling out speeds.
Some where around Rm 75 George notices that we have lost a spare...I tell him we should be able to make it to the next pit because the foot for the jack is holding the other one in place....yea wrong that snaps off immediately. We spot car 120(Trans) and crew off to the right and ask them to tighten the ratchet strap down and tape the foot on, then just give me the foot and I'll hold it.
In to BFG Jamau, fuel(13 gal) shoot a tire in the rack and tape this foot on.
Down the Goat trail, out pass Valle T by the cemetery at 75+ we get hit by car 1210 in a big hurry to catch up with the rest of the 12s?
Skirting the edge of the foothills on the way to the crossover road we see 1210 go up a 15 to 20 footer then all the locals turn and start waving us off, we go left around this small hill and as I'm looking back to my right maybe 3,4,5 other race cars parked for the day.
Out to San Vicente....on the course about 5 miles from the ocean George sees a car on our bumper and moves over to let them go...shit it's Volker ...he tells me we passed them back a ways in the silt.in his dust we can't catch them so on to the beach.
We stop at Mark Nacke's pit to have them remove the light covers. Then up and out of Erindira, the local traffic out was heavy but once we would clear them George was back in it.
The last 15/20 miles were rally car stuff but still you would see people off the side.
Down the hill into Santo Tomas and the finish line, looking back we SHOULD have turned left there, but we made the right and went to the ceremonial finish line only to see with us Volker and Bowman.
We finished min out of 1st and min out 2nd.....
Congratulations to Luvian Volker for his 1st Score Class 5 win, I'm sure he and all his guys are still celebrating that.
Thanks go out to Bruce Anderson....he and his new girlfriend chased the inside
and Claude Archey for chasing the pacific side.....you to Kras for keeping Archey company and up to date on what was happening
FWIW: The first 100 miles I had the GPS backlighting on dim making it hard to see when the sun came in from the front of the car...my bad
It took us 4 hours to get back to Ensenada from Santo Tomas.....nice
Der Kernal