First, a little about YT Motorsports... Sean is YTMS. He's our fearless leader, nobody does baja better then Sean!
YTMS does all the prep, logistics and support for the Lucky Sperm Racing Team. This year Team Lucky had a brand new Jimco Class 10 car, it's bad ass!
This year Cam, Senior Lucky, donated $$$ per mile to Stand Up To Cancer for every mile finished of this almost 1300 mile race, pretty cool!
Special thanks to Cam for making all of this happen!!!
First stop when going to any race in Baja has to be El Trailero, it could be the best tacos in the world!
Then it's off to contingency/tech... Our car was there for almost 8 hours! Here's Ron, aka "cool dick bro", keeping busy.
Fabien rockin' the new Team Suerte shirt!
After a long wait in line we had our team dinner at Sanos, if you haven't been there, make it happen! It's one of the best restaurants anywhere! The spinach salad is incredible!
Then it's race day! Good morning Ensenada!
Here's part of the YTMS team having breakfast with the Herbst team.
Here's a terrible (see what I did there?) shot of Gary Williams, nav dude for Ryan Arciero, and Matt, aka "Stink", one of the Lucky Team nav dudes.
On race day we had 3 chase trucks on the Pacific side and 1 that just did the HWY 3 side and then headed back to the US. This was my view for part of the journey... only in Baja!
Here's the utility bed in all her glory!
If you have ever done this race, you know how taxing it is, both mentally and physically. I've been lucky enough to be both a driver and chase crew in the Baja 1000, and I don't think there's anyone out there that can dispute the fact that the best place to be during the race is IN the race car! Well that wasn't my assignment this year, so for me and the rest of the YTMS chase crew our job was to get the race car and all of us to the finish line!
Here's our pit in San Ignacio. You gotta love when almost your entire team ends up in the same pit, that's where the spot on logistics come into play!
Here's Tom, he's our fire extinguisher man! Is this OSHA?!
For anyone who's seen Dust To Glory, there's a part that talks about the sequence of events and the way thing just happen in Baja. We had one of those moments... Kenny, Tucker(he was sleeping) and I were on the radio with sean who had just pulled out a stuck Herbst Trophy Truck (I hope I don't get sued for using those words). Sean told us to tell the race car to stay to the right in the big silt beds just outside Guayaquil. We relayed the message and asked them what race mile they were at. We just happen to be paralleling the highway at the exact place they were. We see them get passed by a TT and then hear on the radio "we're stuck, we're stuck!!!". From the chase truck we could still see their lights from the road. We asked if they wanted us to come get them, we got a quick "hell yes!". We turned the truck around and with the help of (watch your feet I'm dropping names) BJ's co-dog Willie Valdez, who's TT was sitting on the side of the road dead. He told us the best access road to go in on for our extraction. Thanks Willie!
All I can say is that the YTMS utility bed chase truck is one hell of a recovery vehicle! It was fully loaded and we went through some super deep silt and huge ruts on the race course. Here's the money shot! Tires off the ground (damn those 42" tires!) and Matt doing his best Captain Morgan impression! haha! Pretty sure Kash is sitting in the car sipping a latte?!
The crazy thing about Baja is that was literally the highlight of my trip. Being in the right place at the right time, finding a friend to help us out, driving on the race course to find your stuck race car... that's just what it's all about! Simply awesome!
One of our other co-dogs is Murph. He thought it would be a good idea to race a bike before he got into the right seat for 400 miles! Here's Murph...
Check out this Robby pit stop... I think the jackman is GFB co-founder NICK?!?!?!?!?!
Unfortunately I don't have a lot of race day pics, we were busy!
Job accomplished, we made it to the finish line!!!
It's a lot of work but once you get to the finish you forget how tired you are, how long you've been driving and how bad you smell... You just realize you finished one of the most difficult races in the world!
The entire YTMS Team did an incredible job getting the Lucky Sperm race car to the finish line with a 2nd place finish in class 10 and 19th overall. Great job to our drivers Cam Thieriot, Kash Vessels and Andy Grider. Navigators were Matt Ciccone, and Kevin Murphy. Nice job boys!
And as for the chase crew, what can I say? Sean has assembled the best damn crew in desert racing! I am proud to be a part of YTMS!
NOW THE FUN BEGINS!!!!!!!!!
We mildly celebrated that night in La Paz and had a few cervezas and some tekillya, but running on fumes we didn't make it too far.
The next morning we loaded back up and headed for one of my favorite towns, Loreto. This was Ron's view on the drive...
The drive north to Loreto is beautiful!
"The Raptor is saying 30 miles to empty" comes over the radio... We just left town and there wasn't another stop until Loreto. So we did what any good chase crew would do... we had a pit stop! More OSHA work going on here for sure!
Electricity + Fuel = ??? Yours truly got the job of holding the cables. Notice the GFB hat, represent!
Mandatory pretty cacti shot...
Now the mandatory pretty race car with cacti shot...
Once in Loreto the real celebration began...
This is not going to end well...
Jeff Lewis had a Tucker baby!
Sean with the chef's special sauce on his face!
Caught on camera, Gabe with a drink in his hand!
There must be cows in there?!
Sean, Ron and I enjoying ourselves!
The other half of PBR is my brother Ivan, we should have cut him off hours before this!
Sean super excited!
Watering the rocks...
WWE
drunkselfies.com
Write your own caption...
Tom as a ninja!
Lap dance!
Man down!
Really?!
It was a great night... the next morning not so much!
Uno mas...
After we recovered enough to venture out, we went to one of the coolest places to visit in all of Baja, the town of San Javier. It's a town about 45 outside of Loreto. The San Javier Mission is incredible!
And the road there and back is an adventure in itself...
The highway leaving Loreto is breath taking!
We stopped for lunch in San Ignacio at this incredible restaurant.
Food porn...
This is in the bathroom...
There's another beautiful mission in San Ignacio.
Inside...
My brother is even a jackass in church!
After lunch we kept heading north and decided to take another adventure, the San Borja Mission. None of us had been there, so why not. Here's the road in...
It started getting late and we were only about half way, we had to abort mission and make our way to Bay of LA. Sean had arranged to have dinner ready for us when we got there and it was off the hook! (sorry no shots of dinner, I will do better next time)
Waking up before the sun comes up in Bay of LA is a must (so they tell me, I would have rather slept in but whatever).
One more stop when leaving Bay of LA for a shot of the bay...
Then the long haul home... but first a stop for some more tacos at El Trailero!
Baja is still the old west. It's beautiful. It's mysterious. It's incredible.
Some people think we're crazy for doing what we do... maybe they're right? I think we're just doing something that we love and that keeps our clocks ticking.
I couldn't ask for a better group of BROTHERS to spend this adventure with.
Here's to living life. Loving life. And ALWAYS taking the road less traveled!
