Will Higman and his team failed to finish the Baja 1000, please read on for a recap of the team’s efforts.
The race course this year was the preferred and traditional route from Ensenada to La Paz. In total the race course mileage would be 1047 miles and to this day the Baja 1000 is still the longest continuous point to point race in the world.
Will Higman started his Reliable Lumber Slime Crocodile in 4th position within the highly competitive Class 10 field. Along with his co-driver Jake Johnson, the pair took the green flag at 11:15 AM on Thursday morning. Will quickly passed two of the three cars that started in front of him before the first highway crossing at Race Mile 15.
Things were going as planned until race mile 55 and the first silt bed. “I got greedy when I saw the first car on the road stuck in front of me” said Higman. Getting stuck himself while trying to go around a pile of stuck cars, the pair had to get out of the car and make a plan to continue. “We were stuck for about twelve minutes but the whole class got by us. The worst thing that happened is I popped reverse gear trying to back up out of the mess”.
Higman got going again soon enough but there was a silence within the intercom system, both recognized that the transmission took a hit. Putting the mistake behind him, Will caught up to the tail end of the field quickly by his first pit stop in San Matias at RM 122. “BFG and my chase 1 pit crew did a great job getting me out quick”. At San Felipe RM 172 Will had passed all the cars in his class and was the first car on the road.
During the next pit stop in Puertocitos RM 230 the car of Eli Yee slipped by handing Higman a miserable dusty and slow drive through Gonzaga Bay, normally known as one of the fastest stretches of the race. Will stayed in line and navigated his way through the wet Calamaje Canyon in the darkness and unfortunately lost the GPS, radio and intercom to moisture.
Arriving at the Bay Los Angeles pit stop RM 345 unannounced, the pair found out that they were still holding the second place position two minutes behind Yee, however more problems were revealed. It was discovered that one of the rear hubs had come loose and it along with an axle would need to be replaced. Thanks to Dale and Bret Lenk helping out with the repairs, the car got moving again but still losing 1 ½ hours in the process. “We where just glad to still be in the race and it was kind of fun doing it old school with no radio and GPS”.
When Higman arrived at San Ignacio RM 517 the team was holding their own in about 4th place. Veteran driver Rick Munyon and co rider Matt Niles would take over the driving duties from here and Higman felt very confident with Munyon behind the wheel. “I could not have picked a better driver to race the lower half for me”. Do to recent hurricanes the next 300 plus miles were in really bad shape and very technical, with many water crossings and newly exposed rocks.
Munyon held position through his first pit stop at San Juanico RM 656. From there the next 100 miles was mostly all new territory do to SCORE adding the town of Loreto to the race course. This gave Will and the rest of the chase teams the chance to catch Rick at the next pit RM 776 with about fifteen minutes to spare. When Rick and Matt arrived, they reported that noises in the drive train were starting to develop. Upon inspection there was no external evidence of new problems, so the team sent Rick on his way.
The bad news crackled over the radio as the sun came up early Friday morning. A call came in from the race car that the transmission had finally let go at RM 837, about twenty miles before checkpoint 8 and Ciudad Insurgentes. The failure caused the team to pull out of the race at that point.
Please check the photo gallery throughout the month of December for updates and a complete photo gallery shot by Chris Tobin.