Wes Lefler joins Nick Olson to give an insider’s perspective of what really went down at the Baja 500 2021 race while also chatting about what it was like to pre-run the course for fun.

Transcription:

It’s not desert season without a campfire or chupacabra off-road now here’s your host nick olsen what’s happening everybody it’s chupacabra offroad around the campfire podcast it’s nick and wes what’s happening wes how’s it going everybody good to be back yeah we’re just a couple of off-road enthusiasts i can’t get enough of it mainly in the side-by-side utv world uh we’re accessories company and um this pod is all about baja baja 500 just happened i got to go do a several day trip west down there as well unfortunately west wasn’t a part of the ride that i did but west is part of a chase team in the trophy chuck class and if you’ve been following off-road world offroad racing world at all you would know that uh the 500 had a ton of drama so that’s what we want to chat with tonight a little bit of offer tons of drama so much drama so uh you know we gotta touch on that but um before we get into that we gotta uh give wes his props because if you guys follow the tv show destination polaris wes is one of the main stars on the most recent episode yeah we uh we had a good time a couple months ago back it just aired this last weekend and you know we got asked myself i was able to go part of the roma motorsports clan and go out and enjoy the nevada desert for a couple days and you know see some stuff that i hadn’t seen in a while but also you know just to get out there and have some fun yeah it was really cool i mean i grew up in vegas that’s how west and i you know met when we were youngsters and uh or the area where you were wasn’t one of those areas near nelson hills which is like literally my favorite dirt bike spot in southern nevada it’s kind of out uh below boulder city like and i was trying to look at the geography and see if i recognized some of the area because i’ve been out there dozens of times um was that one of the areas by the river yeah so day two we went down and we started in nelson and i hadn’t been down in nelson forever because it was always known as a moto place and i haven’t had moda for a few years and actually nelson you go back to like probably 15 years ago we did a really a big group ride out there i don’t know if you remember it that was the first time i ever rode moto uh on my like i borrowed a bike went on a moto day ride and we climbed the cell phone tower and everything like that i remember that day and we had a really good time well i hadn’t been out there forever because i considered it a single track place and you know not a big side-by-side place and we uh a friend of ours helped us create a file because he’d been out there several times and man we went to some cool spots some of the funnest trails that i’ve ever been on and it’s just you know hopefully this podcast doesn’t make it to where everybody goes out there but really really fun trails like for the side by sides you know obviously there’s a single tracks up the washes for the dirt bike guys and stuff like that but i mean we did about i would say about 50 miles maybe 60 miles in a big loop and went to a couple places um one place in particular was a place they call flintstone or or bed rock um because you’re out in the middle of the desert everything’s great and also you turn a corner and there’s just car-sized boulders stacked on top of each other house-sized boulders and it was really cool because we got to go there we had lunch um if you haven’t seen the episode you can look it up and watch it and had lunch there that day and you know then we went up a little bit further we were able to do the overlook down into the colorado river and then ended up in nelson the actual town of nelson and did a little bit of writing there it was really really fun you know we had a good time and i can’t wait to go back there actually you know it’s obviously a million degrees right now it being summertime in nevada but but it’d be a fun place to do a night ride yeah you know um i did various motorcycle desert races when i first got into that and uh just all these little places that we that we did races outside of pahrump like northbound on the 95 little town of mercury um you know near mesquite like there’s so many cool spots around the vegas valley so any of you listeners if you guys are from vegas too uh comment below in the comments let us know like what your favorite spot is or some spots that you you think are awesome for utvs because again everything my only reference was dirt bike racing desert racing and the train was was really cool i mean all around and just outside of town yeah nelson’s pretty cool and i mean it’s good to know that there’s a lot of trails out there um that are side-by-side size now so um yeah it’s going to be definitely a place that we can go riding even more now speaking of dirt bikes before we get into um the bar 500 we got a chat moto i mean uh westner big enthusiast of outdoor motocross motocross supercross blah blah and um you know i just want to tell wes that there’s still room on the ken rockson bandwagon if he’s not on it already um i’m really excited right now three rounds in we got ken roxanne looking really good i personally think it’s gonna be a two rider battle between him and ferandis who’s really killing it as a rookie on the 450. um what do you think i mean tomak actually showed up out of the blue like what’s up potomac now what do you think about what do you think he’s going to do i think tomac in this stage of his career is in the slow starter stage everybody knows that he’s a machine i mean you can see it through his personality the outdoors has been his thing for quite a few years to where he is you know minus you know zach osborne with what he pulled off last year but i think tomac i mean it’s kind of scary i mean he once he gets going once he gets that confidence and you know i don’t think it’s ever a physical thing for him i think it’s more starts and technical stuff i think that’s why he has the issues he has in supercross but yeah i’m excited you talk about the kenny bandwagon i’ve been on the candy bandwagon for like 10 years now i want him to win every race um hats off to francis though dylan frannis man that guy he’s he’s that european stuff comes out man and he they ain’t afraid to send it i think i’d be having heart attacks and strokes and anxiety attacks just seeing the ruts in those corners and not knowing if i can even make the corners so it’s fun man it’s funny you know like i’ve been a hater of the y y z 450 pretty much ever since it went backwards motor in 2010 and people like yourself all yamaha yz450s all of our buddies have been ragging on you because that bike has pretty much been cursed i think they haven’t won a championship in forever um and um you know it’s funny now that the star bikes are not tuned by factory yamaha look at how much better procedure and veranda’s looked the last couple rounds of supercross and now you know right really cool to see mookie running outdoors this year as well because the the yz450 is now i mean ferandis is killing it and that bike has not been up front yeah at all in the last 10 years i mean i don’t know if it’s the different uh the difference between supercross and and the outdoors that makes the bikes shine um in their elements but it has you know this season has been the honda show if you look at it and then you throw friends in there and he’s that bike’s going good man like you know you see sexton and roxanne and their bikes just seem faster i don’t know if it’s the riders or the bikes but then you look at the ktms who you know ruled supercross for a couple years and been most consistent and they’re struggling now i i think it’s more rider than that i mean i am on another bandwagon the cooper webb hopefully he doesn’t get a top 10 bandwagon so if you’re on that bandwagon go ahead and comment below but uh so yeah i mean it’s fun man like i said i’m i’m into it this year watching the outdoors and it’s fun to watch and you know as a guy that wrote a little bit of moto and nick’s wrote lotsa moto um man those guys they can rip man i mean i can’t imagine doing that long of a moto at that high low rate of pace or even half that rate of pace baddest dudes on planet earth top of the food chain in all of motorsports all of action sports everybody knows it’s all about moto so you know ever all the rest of this other stuff is really one step below um like you said it’s 90 rider and you know i’m not so much of a cooper webb fan these days um i he is really mentally tough and oh yeah definitely not a fan because he really laid it down in super cost you got to give him props and he really defeated ken so i really enjoy him fading back to 8th 9th 10th 11th 12th place right now um i never thought um he’s really put up really good results in the 450s outdoors so we’ll see if he actually gets a couple top fives i don’t really think he’ll be a factor i think it really i think the taller riders really excel for the most part i mean not always but i think that the taller riders really excel in the outdoors more than the shorter riders um just because it’s easy to be comfortable when the course gets sketchy things like that you have that better control of the bike i guess is what i would think but yeah it’s not always the case you know not always ricky’s the goat and he’s only like five four and a half on a good day yeah but i think prime ricky like i mean he is like ricky he’s awesome but i think ricky in his prime in racing the at the pace that they’re racing nowadays and the amount of freaking talent that is out there not to take anything from ricky because i’m not but i think that he might not be the top dog right now you know yeah you know it’s just a different game i mean they’ve just excelled so far in the last 10 12 years it’s just crazy well we’ll keep bringing up moto i’m sure the seasons can develop as we get into some more of these pods i my only comment on tomac is i don’t think he’s going to be a champion contender i do think he’s going to show up and kill everybody at southwick because he always does um but i think he’s just kind of sounds like he decides this deal with the yamaha is already signed and he’s already selling all of his green clothing and repainting his garage blue from what the internet rumors are saying so maybe like there’s some bad blood there i heard they’re not giving him factory parts he’s over it he’s just riding it out who knows but i i think like him like same thing with adam c like adam sees showing blinding speed here and there but i want to see adam c put together five or six actual motos without a dumb tip over before i’d say he’s actually going to be a title threat i do think he’ll win some motors i do think he will take away take some podium spots but i don’t know adam sees saying blinding speed but yeah i mean yeah i agree i mean that whole career is like kind of i mean he’s such a fast rider cincinnati i like i love watching him and you want him to do well but i mean he just seems to he’s such a talent but it just doesn’t have the full package there and i i don’t know if it’s because he he always gets his speed up and then injured and then gets a speed up and injured that’s gotta be a rough way but i don’t know we’ll see man we’re only three races in so yeah we got to i mean the last race is until the second week of september like i mean it’s gonna be a crazy summer so yeah no doubt all right well enough moto let’s talk about what we’re here to talk about the baja 500 so um if you guys uh follow channel it’s on our youtube channel we just got the video live it’s pretty long it’s 25 minutes we kind of try to switch up a little bit of how we shoot i had another person on the trip this guy named michael who really helped shoot a lot more content we tried to kind of switch up the style a little bit from what we’ve done and getting a lot of good feedback on that so let me know if you guys like the bajavid but basically you know i went with the small group we had four cars and we pre-ran the whole course we did a little offshoot the um the video and the whole trip was sponsored by onyx offroad a gps software app so it’s really cool those guys coming on board our first sponsor i think we talked about on the pod a while ago but they sponsored a moab trip which you were part of and they’ll be sponsoring a glamas trip later this year so either way as a as a ricky racer a part-time racer i’ve always wanted to pre-run an actual race course right you know wes every year unless you’ve really been in it you’ve been part of a chase team down there for what five six seven years yeah about seven years now and they always stay on the podium this was the hardest baja 500 ever this is not this is the roughest right i always want to know like how hard was it and we got pretty much as close as you could maybe get to it without racing because we wrote it a couple days before i guarantee it was a lot rougher than what we saw on race day of course but you know seeing how they marked the course seeing where they put the vcps really kind of gives you an idea of like the strategy especially of course the top guys who have the time and the money to go for the win have the time to do the pre-run but and then see how hard the course was and and wes like just i want to kick it off with this topic you know the utvs be all the class 10 cars which i think is the first time that’s ever happened in a 500 or a 1000 um yeah they have done that at a couple other races like what silver state may be and been closed yes many a time but they haven’t actually beat all of them and of course all the talk and trophy truck is four wheel drive so you know you might not know this but i’m curious to ask people that you rub elbows with like has the course design of score gotten rougher more difficult something that that suits a four wheel drive better slower more technical something that utvs are naturally going to excel on and of course a four wheel drive trophy is it just the the bump in technology as well over the last 10 years what’s the mixture of both but it’d be interesting to like chat with somebody like a cameron steel who or people who’ve like really lived baja racing for the last decade and curious like has jose g as a team at score really tried to make a hard i mean because we’re going up like the section right after mike’s like i couldn’t believe class 11 cars but you could even get up it or even a 16 car right now i don’t i don’t think the score actually thinks about that when when they mark these courses but the technology and the advancement in these four-wheel drive or all-wheel drive whatever you want to call them these trucks is just amazing they are just easier to drive now that being said in that slow twisty turny um loose silt all that stuff i mean there’s nothing better than having all four wheels spinning and having unlimited power so obviously they’re going to excel and all that type of stuff now you know you still have these fast fast two-wheel drive guys you know the amputee is and you know luke just barely got in his all-wheel drive and i mean his truck ripped you know you go over to the san felipe side and where you’re pinned at you know 120 going through whoops and it’s obviously going to be probably better in a two-wheel drive truck because it’s just lighter and it’s faster and so as far as like score if they’re doing that i don’t i don’t think they’re doing anything i just think that that’s the way that it’s going and that the four-wheel drive is just gonna be faster it’s just gonna i mean you’re you’re gaining a half a second in every corner i mean it adds up you know because you’re able to hit that gas and go and you know speaking of the side-by-sides beating the class 10s if somebody would have told me before this race that that would have happened i probably would have said you’re probably right considering the amount of slow speed stuff from once you leave valley tea and you get all the way over to the beach and i don’t know there’s some fast sections in there but they’re not a vast fast section i would say that a utv is just going to excel in there uh utv is going to be going you know as fast as they need to go i mean utv you can stop in the sill you could stop in the sill you could back up and you could go again yeah you’re not doing that in a ten car you’re not doing that in the 16 car you’re not doing that in a 12 car and honestly you’re not going to do that in the 6100 truck it’s just not going to happen because the power to weight ratio just doesn’t work that way and that’s what i wanted to say you know like before we get into the trophies um you know utvs um it seemed like the racecourse in the simplest form the first half was technical the second half coming back up the beach was fast you know there was there’s variations of both but tracking the race i think blurton was out front by around the halfway point right in the can-am and ripping and um he they had quite a put quite a bit of time but i did watch the 10 car really eat up a lot of time coming back up the beach i know they can run a higher top speed and there was some fast rough stuff where i remember going through it and we’re talking like um around san vincente around 340 to 370 there was some rough stuff where you’re like yeah man like a 10 car would eat us alive through here for sure it was big whoops it was rough it was like you had to probably meter your your speed in a utv um but then you had a technical last section there you know back up to the finish so i guess my point is um you know i’d say the 10 guys maybe guys who were in the two-wheel drive they’d probably say oh well a lot of these course designs with the silt beds there’s these major pilots what was it race mile 176 and these utvs can just go over whatever and get up stuff and everybody else can get stuck behind each other like you said the utv has that ability right because it’s lightweight to do that so i don’t know i mean i think there’s some observations of being on the course which is really exciting and then watch how the race pans out watch the overall times it’s really interesting it’s cool as like a as a fan of the sport to get to run the actual course and then hear what they’re talking about and say oh yeah i remember exactly where that silk that was and right you know the some of the silt like they talked about 190 was not that bad because there was a beautiful line around it when we went through it so you know it’s kind of interesting to see how the how the cookie crumbles but i will say we didn’t see a whole lot of pre-runners but it’s like pre-running nowadays is utvs or the top guys which overdrive pre-orders there’s really not much in between a lot of the trophy truck guys are using utvs to pre-run it it’s just they’re easier um they’re easier to get into the places and they’re less expensive you have to prep a whole big huge pre-runner in order to get it done but do you remember what the time gaps were between the top 10 and and the top side by side how much did side by side win by overall all right yeah um how much did a side-by-side be to uh class yeah um it was it was sizable it was more than a few minutes okay it was clear looking at this course i would say that i mean yeah 10 i mean i don’t think the 10 guys need to think that anything crazy is happening and you know the golf cart guys are coming in and trying to take over i don’t think that at all because i think even the top racers and the people who race these side-by-sides they understand these 10 cars have unlimited suspension they don’t have all the horsepower in the world but man when those things get going you know with those transmissions and they get going they’re going to eat up stuff that we’re going to check up for every single time like they can just do that so i think your longer races their baja 1000s which are going to have a lot more high speed sections i don’t think a side-by-side is going to have much for a 10 car and those types of things for instance i mean they did that king of hammers class 10 versus utv race speaking to some of the guys that raced the utvs against them they tried they pushed their cars so hard to near breaking points just trying to stay paced and it it wasn’t we were watching that race and i think the first seven cars through um were class tens yeah and they did a qualifier and i think blurton and whalen they were like third and fourth qualifiers and there was like seven at least seven ten cars that came through in that race so i think it’s just the way the course was i think that that tight twisty loose you know silty windy all that type of stuff it just benefits the side by sides you know that’s why i kind of posed the question about course design because like let’s call it what it is the score 500 and the baja 1000 are the top two of of any other off-road events in the world especially in our you know in the con in our continent um so you know whatever score racing is that’s what it is you know like the king of the hammers is a huge event you know best on desert’s big but like you know that’s why i’m curious if you think that they are making more technical courses if what they want the ba experience to be because they know they know that going through certain areas they’re going to get silty you know people are still going to pre-run people love to pre-run in baja you know that’s part of the whole experience um and obviously based on what course design they’re going to do you we saw some sections that look like they were new and fresh and they’re always trying different routes i’ve heard like cameron still comment on that a couple of those after race after um race shows so it’s just kind of a question it’d be fun to like chat with some people who really have lived it on the racing world and see what they’ve seen but um moving on to the trophy truck class man um it was uh an amazingly exciting race to try to track uh you’re pitting with menzies so like let’s just hear about your pitting experience uh with with the guy who is first qualifier first on course and um leading the charge almost halfway through the whole race yeah i mean i have to say that this race up until the time that we had to pull the plug was amazing like it was one of the only races that i sat there and just tracked it like non-stop just to see if the gaps open up if they don’t open up listening to the radio because you had us then you had luke and you had andy and you had uh ampudia the top four trucks um i know jax had a little bit of issues so there was a couple minute gap and we after that but those top four trucks they were within the minute of each other all the way up to 225. yeah i saw ultimate race mall 70 like you said they were all bumper to bumper man it was yeah that’s only 70 miles but it was it was it’s crazy you knew it was game on and all four of those dudes had a could win for sure and i mean we had a we had a good game plan you know being up front and having a great a great vehicle a great working vehicle and you know having it dialed and everything ready we were all for as long as we don’t cut a tire and or somebody get around us during a pit i we were all excited for bryce to get to the beach um and i think that the other guys were weren’t very excited about bryce getting to the beach because i honestly feel as though if bryce had the truck running 100 when he got to the beach it was going to be game over at that point it would have been it would have been somebody else and i mean that could be biased you know not not knocking luke cause he did so it was so good in a brand new truck and andy you know he’s always there i mean those guys are just on it but um it’s funny because wes in score desert racing in 2021 the game over is like six days later now thanks to cell phone cameras and drama no that’s that’s very true and you know uh we we knew there’s going to be some penalties before we were even done and um you know people have talked about in the in the fischistic show and the stella is not working and this and whatever and you know stella’s some stella’s are reading fast some stellas are reading slow but what i don’t understand with these guys with these million dollar trophy trucks is who cares what the stella says who cares the only reason you have that stella is so that they can track you and so that you can push a push to pass that nobody’s going to listen to anyway other than that you have a james lynn wired truck that you know he probably charged you a hundred grand 80 grand for everything to put into that truck and it tells you how fast you’re going you no trophy truck driver should get a speeding penalty ever because you can pull the data and i know that score doesn’t like to do that but who cares if you’re if you’re stella is saying that you’re going 41 and you look at your motec and you look at your gps and they’re saying 37 that’s all that matters and there was a point to where uh oren was saying that because we knew that luke was catching yeah we knew that luke was catching bryce but they weren’t speeding any speed sections and at that point they said let them catch us it don’t matter we are not going to get a speeding penalty and obviously we didn’t get one but we didn’t finish um we started we know we had some issues with the with the fuel of the truck um add a little context real quick you know if you guys aren’t familiar with score baja racing you know there’s on-road sections to connect off-road sections they’re a 37 mile per hour speed limit and all these trucks that were all set up to where they’ll shut down and only go 37. click a button and hold the gas to the floor the truck will not go over 37 miles an hour and then if it’s off just a little bit there’s a dial there’s an up one up or down one and you can hit the buttons and you can adjust the speed while your driver just hasn’t matched to the floor and it don’t matter how far he pushes the gas pedal it won’t go any faster and then also too if you’re not that familiar with baja racing um those roads are live open highways that regular pedestrians are going on and then all of us that are enthusiasts or your chase teams like wes are heading down to help chase your vehicle so that’s just how baja racing works the fans are always been a huge part of the sport they’re right next to it i mean we were shooting some content looking at our baja video we’re right next to them ripping at us at 100 miles an hour and slowing down you know it’s awesome there’s there’s nothing like it in terms of just being enthusiastic working for a chase team or just watching the the sport but you know and also one thing wes brought up before we get into it here uh there’s a great wrap-up show that just happened uh fishgistics facebook youtube but they had a couple of the top racers some of the names we’re going to mention um that got penalties so it was cool to listen to their point of view uh if you guys haven’t seen on social like west will kind of break it down with all i got all these little bullet points and then let’s just just tell people you know if they haven’t seen what the clip was what happened and then like the response from the driver and like kind of like our personal thought on each of the elements that happened that made this baja 500 uh incredibly dramatic well it was already dramatic as it was um leading up to before before we even got to um to 225 where where bryce lost the lead going back a few miles um there was a crash where one of these trucks uh driven by andy mcmillan was in a pit stop his pit stop gets done he pulls out and what people don’t understand in just a little context like nick said in mexico it’s a live race course there’s not there’s not a okay there’s a pit area 25 mile an hour zone everybody stop and get a pit you choose where your pits are you choose when you pit and it’s live race course so there’s trucks that can be going by you at 130 miles an hour and they don’t have to lift um so you have to it’s a lot of skill on coming these pit plans uh so andy mcmillan pulls out his pit uh the amputee were coming up behind them and there’s nowhere to pass um if you don’t take the opportunity to pass somebody there’s gonna be so much blinding dust that you’re just gonna have to sit back in the dust and hope that you your gap is in the minute with the minute intervals between the trucks and um and putty ended up giving andy a little tap at high speed missed a turn smacked a huge car sized rock rolled his truck he’s out of it so then the top three trucks are still running their exact same truck build um obviously they have different motors and different drives and different tires and things like that and get to two about 220 ish bryce cuts a tire co-rider gets out changes the tire he gets to 225 we re-rack a tire as we’re re-racking a tire into the truck that’s when luke gets around we were already struggling though um with some fuel standing issues um andy comes we get out so we’re third but by the time we got to the beach we didn’t have anything for him bryce is not going to hold people up to you know save face you know he knows his truck wasn’t running and at that point it turned into a you know really a two-man show uh luke mcmillan out in front and andy mcmillan his cousin um fighting back and forth on who’s gonna win and andy according to what we had andy had him pretty much the entire race andy was corrected winner when he when he passed us our corrected leader at 225 and he was running a really really good race he was he was right there he knows where he has to be he’s very meticulous he’s very smart he’s very about the times and about mile 300 to get on the highway section and as nick said these are live highways so you have local traffic people who could care less about off-road i know that when we’re down there you think that everybody loves it and everybody’s about it but it’s really not the case and the problem with this is that it’s still a live race course even though it’s 37 miles an hour you can lose more time in a speed zone being stuck behind slower traffic and semi trucks then you’ll lose on a flat out 125 mile an hour section way more time because if you’re going 25 because there’s traffic and your competitor is going 37 that gap just is getting huge huge and the show of course had a little more context had what had like 30 or 40 miles of um yes and people kind of complained it was kind of a lot it was on the heavier side of my way so that like you said that would add up over over 40 miles of oh yes when these guys are like when i was tracking them wes it looked like they were they could probably see each other’s dust a lot of the race which was incredibly guaranteed andy actually said that that when after his incident which i’ll explain in a second he he could see luke he could see his truck and that’s got to feel great when you when you’re chasing somebody down and you can see them and you know they’re doing everything to get away with you from you and you’re just doing it and you’re able to keep up so right around mile 300 andy jumps on the highway his pit is just up the road luke’s pit is just up the road also so they’re both gonna do a pit stop and i think this heated moment andy um gets basically in a traffic jam where it stopped and uh i don’t know from the video it doesn’t look like he nudged the guy some people say he did nudge the guy but he he darts out and goes and do a pass because it’s only a two-lane highway and this is the major highway this is the highway that runs from tijuana all the way down to cabo tulane highway like it’s used for commerce yes yes anybody that gets produce in the united states this is where the majority of your produce comes in the southwest your avocados your asparagus everything they grow everything down here so it’s a busy area and it ends up making a pass and a car even though they’re only going about five miles an hour car kind of had to pull off the road to let andy go around score considered that an unsafe um pass on the highway and he was given a 30 minute penalty so they you don’t know about these penalties until you get to the finish and honestly you don’t know about them until the next day or the day after because scores got to figure it out so the race continues on go ahead oh yeah i was going to say so if you didn’t follow the race uh amy got a penalty but andy and luke finished within seconds of each other correct so at the very end of the finish line you know it’s right before dark and people are saying a couple seconds this is coming down to right this is before we know that before the video leaks before we know there’s a penalty right right as we’re coming into the finish line luke who was leading on you know on the road gets into a little bit of drama himself right so luke makes up a lot of time so like i said andy had him i think it was like 45 seconds corrected he was winning the race and he was winning the race so he just so luke stepped it up and you know just so you guys know this is a 400 was it 490 miles four dish yeah yeah 466 right i think is what it was of those 466 miles it was at the finish it was four seconds luke ended up physically or corrected winning by four seconds so that’s one minute and four seconds in front of andy so luke who’s coming up over the mountains and coming back in they basically come in the same i’m coming in sonata the same way they went out but you don’t get a pre-run the way in you only get a prayer on the way out luke makes a mistake misses a turn it’s kind of a fork in the road and he’s trapped and he’s stuck between a rock and a hard place considering there’s people everywhere camp set up you can’t go backwards on the course if you go backwards on the course it’s a penalty and so he pulls up to this camp that he needed to basically drive through um there was some tents set up guy walks over um you don’t really see i mean from the video you don’t really hear the audio according to luke and and to his co-writer duncan they were yelling at the guy like hey you know and the guy kind of like they said the guy said yeah go ahead and lifted the tent out of the way and he drove through it apparently i guess they recorded it yeah apparently that’s not what happened and they were upset or whatever so luke gets to the finish and it is the weirdest thing ever there’s no smile on andy’s face there’s no smile on luke’s face luke even said that they’re like okay get on the stage we’re gonna give you the the unofficial wind spray the champagne hold the flat he said no i’m not going up there i need to talk to jose g and this happened out of 466 miles this happened five miles from the finish and the last few miles is like a speed zone so heat of the battle you’re running your guys are telling you hey andy’s beating you you gotta go you gotta go you gotta go and then this happens and it’s just you’re just sunk the amount of money and the amount of effort that these drivers put in to win these races and to have it at that point i get it it’s gut-wrenching whether you crash like amputees you know halfway through the race or or you have a fuel issue at mile 300 like bryce amount of money and everything that you do it’s just gut wrenching but to know that you have you can win the race five miles from the finish and that’s you know the issue so that night um they said that luke had some speeding penalties um and so they made andy the unofficial winner andy gets the flag and he pops the champagne um and we think it’s andy’s race you know and then luke’s gonna get second well all of a sudden the next morning the unofficial results show luke actually won by four seconds and andy got a 30-minute penalty which still places him in second place um and then larry rossler was in third and now all of a sudden everything starts going crazy this video goes viral and the tent video and then then andy’s video of him running people off the road at five miles an hour and then larry rossler was attached to a video where a chase truck made an unsafe pass and almost killed a family ran them off the road and then that family actually was videoing the inside of the car when the chase truck was coming at them so every keyboard warrior in the off-road industry all starts giving their opinions and score goes and they actually have a review board which is racers it’s uh organization event guys it’s local people i don’t know exactly who’s on it i do know that larry rossler was supposed to be on it but he excluded himself because it was going to affect him you know and score came out penalties and andy stuck with his uh 30-minute penalty luke’s speeding penalties which sorry luke i know for a fact those were legit and i feel as though score just removed those because they never remove speeding penalties i figure they just remove them because the overall penalty that luke was given for the tent um thing was a disqualification moves larry rossler up to first place larry rossler becomes your official winner of the baja 500 andy second place um and yeah it’s just the weirdest it went from the funnest craziest race to watch when the traffic check class to the weirdest thing is drama and you know and win another race in my opinion luke luke did not deserve a disqualification i agree you deserve a penalty i didn’t realize he couldn’t he couldn’t back up in the on the course without a penalty and the wrong attorney made up on the road there was someone parked at the end of that road so he was literally on a little wedge road with with tents people camping you know feet from right of course and a lot of people were like well if you watch the video he’s like nudging and he’s like he’s like telling the guy get out of the way and he’s like he’s like like he’s gonna run him over anyway and i and then a lot of people understand with these transmissions in these trucks they’re uh paddle shifted they’re they shift at certain rpms so he was actually downshifting his vehicle and that’s why it would nudge and it didn’t move it just makes a a nudge like this like so people who didn’t know thought that it looked really bad and um the one person though that didn’t really feel didn’t really say much about their penalty which was surprising was was andy like andy didn’t think like he was fine with his penalty and i think in hindsight if luke would have got a 30 minute penalty i think andy would have been very upset and i think andy’s very happy even though they’re family this is just my opinion i might be wrong but uh i think andy is happy that luke was disqualified because bryce is out uh gets a dnf luke basically gets a dnf on point and so now it’s between andy and somebody else for a points championship which means what other other other other other friends so the three guys that you’d be fighting for a championship for i mean rossler’s right there too but he’s still going to be down points because he didn’t do so well in um he was down in san felipe and now andy’s okay i got second place sounds good to me and he can move on and bryce’s championship is over and putia’s championship is over and luke’s championship is over and i get it bryce made his decision because the truck wasn’t running right and pewdies crashed that’s another thing but i feel so bad for luke mcmillan um i don’t think it was right i don’t i think score got it wrong i think even if they would have gave him an hour penalty i still think that he deserved it i don’t feel as though he endangered people’s lives um i don’t feel as though he did something that was completely disrespectful or anything i just feel that it was heat of the moment um maybe it would have been better if he would have backed up and turned around and took the backwards on course penalty and got second place i know he wasn’t thinking that at the time yeah i mean they’re within seconds yeah and everybody’s been there don’t matter what you’ve done in sports it don’t matter if you’re a race car driver if you’ve played this sport or that sport you just don’t think straight when when it when it’s all in the line and you know we’ll see um the mcmillans are a great family and i think that luke’s gonna come back and he’s gonna try to win every single race even just to stick it to people and and to show and you know he’s a very you know i wouldn’t say he’s a very talkative type guy but he you know he spoke his piece and and how he felt about it and he’s going to move on and he’s not going to bad mouth score he’s not going to bad mouth you know certain things and it’s just one of those things it just it’s kind of a sour taste and before i legend nick rossler who has won more races than anybody and you know he’s one of them on moto and one of them in several different classes and trophy trick class and everything like that he said it best he’s like i was happy with third place i was over the moon about third place he’s like you know i i was i was doing it for the team to get a podium was the most amazing thing that we could have done and he’s like it’s not the way i wanted to win a race you got to accept it you got to take it as the official winner he’s like i’m gonna i’m gonna accept it as the winner but he’s like it’s definitely not the the way that i want because you get that little asterisk next to it type of thing that well if luke didn’t do this or if andy didn’t do that you would have got smoke type thing so hats off to larry russler for you know being that guy and and uh you know being a class for the sport yeah you know so um like you said i agree i think the mcmillan luke mcmillan’s penalty was was too harsh on a dq luckily like we’ve kind of talked about in our sport i don’t know if what’s more important for racers for an overall championship or individual wins like especially when you’re talking about the baja 1000 so luke could still come back win the baja 1000 the biggest race of the year which you know i’m sure would be a huge massive accomplishment maybe even mean more to him or mean more to a lot of racers than a complete championship so who knows i mean everyone looks at that differently but you know as we kind of wrap up here wes you know a lot of this stuff happened score racing in baja is wild um there’s been some changes over the years to try to make it safer what do you think you know rule-wise i mean the speed zones you know pitting on the highway what do you think are i think because this was brought up in the wrap-up show with some of the guys maybe not proposed solutions but you know what do you think uh could make because the sport’s always going to be exciting we want the fans to be safe everyone wants everyone to be safe you know ultimately there’s been fatalities over the years it’s it’s it’s hardcore it’s gnarly you know like you said it’s 100 miles an hour and putia brought up like one of the sections near coyote where i stayed the first night that guy’s ranch there should be a speed zone we’re ripping at 100 right by his fence post you know i think everyone is in favor of safety what do you think would be uh some potential changes score could make because like they like you said the truck drivers were complaining about the stellas there’s some things that are happening this kind of money this level a lot of people complain about the results taking days like what does score need to do what can they do uh what can we learn from all this and make racing safer hopefully prevent some of these penalties and let these big dogs just duke it out in a safe manner for a top top dog well i kind of agree with what was said on that show and i’ll explain to explain what those what they were talking about um for one i i think that highway speed zones need to be an untimed area they did this a couple years ago at the baja 400 and yeah it takes more manpower and it takes more time to figure it out on the computer but guess what there was a section of highway that was dangerous that semi trucks would go up it was a short hill climb about three miles long but if you get stuck behind a semi and there’s ten cars behind the semi and then you come up in your race truck what other option do you have than to try to make unsafe passes so that you don’t lose your race on a highway because the guy behind you the guy behind you is not going to do the same thing and you know so i think the score needs to make those those speed zones untimed whether that’s a a 10 minute window to go uh you know to go five miles you can do whatever you want but your your clock starts at 10 minutes you know it’s easy they can set one guy at the at the exit for the speed zone that particular year in the baja 500 it was the crossover world from valley tea and then it went south towards uh guerilla negro and then there was a zone there and i think it was a 15 mile zone and they had 22 minutes to to get to their back to their start point and then your skin yeah and speaking of this you know a lot of class 10s and utvs got speed penalties so would this negate the whole speeding penalty scenario i mean obviously people could still speed and get in trouble but you know these not all cars are sophisticated as a trophy trucks in terms of push a button keep your car below 37. you know and we were talking about we both raced utvs like it would be really hard to keep it at or under 37 for 10 miles at a time four times you know four different times throughout the baja yeah so you know do you think that’s also something they were just extra harsh on penalties or what can we do to mitigate penalties because you’d like to see the winner get announced at the finish but you know there’s always going to be cell phone tapes of people you know from the the famous tava vildosa front bumper guy moment um but what do you think about that so i think i think what the one we’re talking about with the highway speeds they make that a non-timed area i think that’s gonna one keep your unsafe lane passes uh it’s gonna keep your driver safe and and spectators and people who don’t care about off-road race center traveling on the highway it’s gonna keep them safe and it’s going to keep it honest um as far as the speeding penalties other places because you mentioned like el coyote where they’re going right through there at full speed definitely should be a speed zone i don’t know why they can’t do a speed zone i don’t understand why they couldn’t do one i mean they should it’s easy best of desert does it every single one of their pits you go in it’s a must stop you mark it as a must stop and it’s a 25 mile an hour zone and then they guess what they put at the end of the pit resume race speed and you hit the gas and you’ll be able to tell somebody speed in there i think that’s what needs to be happening inside the dirt areas of the racecourse um but i think also one of the biggest problems they have right now is the stellas um i don’t think there’s i think the majority uh what was it they said less than uh 10 or 15 cars didn’t get a speeding speeding penalty in this entire race it’s like 89 of the race cars got a penalty i think it’s i think it’s based on the stella in my opinion and i could be completely off base and i explained this to you earlier nick is that i feel as though that if these stellas aren’t calibrated and you feel as though you’re looking at your gps which is a speed you’re looking at your speedometer to speed and they’re going to be very very close when i’m in the car i’m looking at the gps i don’t pay attention to our tracker speed and i and i look down at the speedometer and that’s how i tell my driver to go to speed and then we very very very rarely get any type of families when it comes to speed i think in this case i think we had some stellas that weren’t calibrated that your gps could say 37 and your speedometer said 37 but your stella said 20 or 30. so these individuals thinking oh well the still is what matters so we’re gonna we’re gonna make up some time because we got a stella that’s you know this is great i don’t think that that signal and this could be completely wrong i don’t think the actual signal is being tracked is it’s always going to be correct it’s going to be a satellite thing that’s always going to correct regardless of what that digital display needs so i think as though that digital display on the stella is because it’s not calibrated that that’s why people were going 37 on their on their gps they were going 37 on the speedometer and then there’s their stellar was saying 35 and they went 2 miles an hour faster and they got a penalty for it and i think that’s what happened i think that there’s a problem with estella’s i think score the amount of money that’s put into these races and people pre-running and just millions of dollars you know accumulated you know for the you know it’s going to leave people a sour taste in their mouth that a tracker is what costs them the race yeah you know 2021 like there’s got to be a trackers that can issue the penalty hey you got popped at mile marker 105. plan on uh you know one to four minute penalty whatever it is exactly and there are times where some people have a bad day and they’re like two hours down and they just speed no matter what and we’ve had situations in best of desert that are similar that the the tracking things that they use there same thing i i mean i’ve been in a race where we were going the speed limit through a long speed zone and a 10 car that i know the driver walked completely away from us just see ya gone and this is like a three mile speed zone gone we get to the end the next day we got results we got a penalty i looked up for that ten car no penalty and that’s the thing is that these guys are like man i spent millions of dollars am i speeding am i not well we’ll just figure it out no we’ll tell jose g that no we weren’t speeding and we’ll show them and then score doesn’t want to look at their data you know off of their computers off their trucks because score doesn’t trust their trucks and score needs to sit their butts down with stella and say look this was a great system it worked great for a couple races now you guys need to put some money into it and you need to fix the problem there’s no reason there’s no reason that only 10 cars out of this entire fleet of vehicles racing didn’t get a speeding penalty and that you had pretty much every utv but brandon sims every single utv but brandon sims got a penalty speeding and brandon said it i didn’t pay attention to my stella my co-writer we look at the gps we look at our speed armor we don’t even pay attention to the stellar don’t pay attention to it and look what happened he didn’t get a speeding penalty no matter what estella said because he was going the speed limit so those are my things i think that they definitely the highway speed zones for one to make it safe for everybody no time there and it makes it makes it a much safer race much better much more um clean the people can’t complain about it people can’t say because there’s a lot of rumors man i’ve heard rumors of certain teams having semi trucks ready to go and blocking i mean i’m not joking like this really happens it’s cutthroat down there and it’s like the wild it’s like the wild west you know and and also it kind of puts a sour taste in my mouth as you know i want to raise the baja 500 i want to raise the bottom 1000 say i can or i did but you know that’s a whole other topic but but if it’s not clean and you you don’t know if you can even win even if you do everything correctly you know scores gonna figure it out or they’re gonna lose losing long range yeah you that’s really what i was thinking just to kind of close up you know like um i’ve been a part of a couple best in desert races vega cerino did part of parker race this year you know done a couple utv races and man just pre-run and baja baja would be the ultimate adventure the ultimate buccalista race and all of this unfortunately just kind of leaves a black eye on on score racing and you know there’s nothing like baja with all that type of terrain the open mileage the wild westness that does make it so exciting and compelling and you know it is on a whole different level it is a uh significantly you know more costly but man i mean we’re chasing adventure we’re chasing fun and in mexico is you know far more exciting in my opinion than what i know than racing any race in the u.s you know base reno i guess something you maybe compare it with um and you know it’s it’s rocky technical terrain it’s not just graded roads you know like i like that stuff i like technical writing so i agree you know i am it’s kind of kind of close up like just talking about riding down there in general and baja i mean we did it we did a trip together back in 2017 you’ve done you know some off-roading more chasing i guess you could say like i mean what would you tell uh people listening to this pod who maybe casual race enthusiast but like maybe they’re they’re getting excited i want to go on a baja like what would you tell them um you know just in baja in terms of experience uh i mean i would tell them the plan for the unexpected going to baja because you never know um bring the spares and the stuff that you need make sure that your vehicle is equipped baja will not and is not forgiving it will eat you up and you could have the best vehicle ever and you could have issues down there but it’s just so beautiful like like you said it’s just an amazing place like you know around every corner is new adventure in baja um i would say you know get a good group of friends get a good chase guy that knows knows the stuff maybe take somebody that’s been there before and uh you know you’re gonna be able to explore some things and see some things that you normally wouldn’t see in the states uh it’s gorgeous down there and it’s it’s just weird it’s kind of people haven’t been there people haven’t experienced it it’s a feeling it’s baja is like alive you know you you just it’s kind of like disneyland for side-by-side riders or disneyland for off-road enthusiasts because it’s just like it’s the ultimate as you said earlier they’re nicknamed 500 the bomb 1000 those are the big off-road races that is the thing like if you can say that you’ve raced it that’s that’s a check mark if you can say that you’ve you’ve won it it’s another check mark but it’s a whole other thing just to say i went down there and i rode that course like i’ve been there i’ve done that i know what those guys went through as you mentioned you know you were able to hear them talk about different sections you’re like man i was there i know exactly what you’re talking about no you know and so yeah anybody that’s planning to go down there man just just be prepared and and be ready to uh plan your next trip after you get done with that one because it’ll it’ll grab a hold of you it’s uh it’s it’ll it’s it’s a part of you if you feel alive when you’re there i guess it’s the best way to say it yeah you know speaking of planning we’re gonna do a part two to our baja video where i’m gonna kind of go through using you know the onyx off-road app and then what i think you can think of when you wanna plan your big ride you know like we do a lot of as many of these big adventure rides as we can and a lot of people on the channel ask like hey can you invite me on that ride and um also like what do it what does it take to go to arizona peace trail so you know i think that’s a big question i think a lot of utv owners have gone to their local rides they’re looking for that big adventure right that’s why you kind of get into the sport and there’s no place like baja you know arizona peace trail is really rad um a trip i’ve done down from puerto penasco to el gofo was really really cool moab is really cool but you have to think differently you have to drive at a different pace you have to have a different level of preparation otherwise honestly it’s hard to invite people who are so newbie that you don’t think that they’re going to have a good chance if they don’t understand they need to drive at a 500 mile pace they don’t understand they need to be their car needs to be dialed with good tires with good problems blah blah blah you know because you know absolutely maybe somebody you know some of these rides you do want to have a chase driver in case things happen because it can happen to anybody’s car even the most well prepped i’ve seen all kinds of weird issues that i’ve not even seen in racers or my years working for polaris going to camp razor five or six seven times like unexpected things happen so you know i think this next vid will be fun um kind of deeper dive into the app and and have a good gps setup because you really do need a good navigation and i kind of had a little bit i had a lot of help using the race course for the most part of our ride because it’s my first time leading a ride in baja and there’s a lot of other things like you said baja is alive it’s alive with a fast fire road and there’s a guy coming the other way with a big truck or a razor or a guys on bicycles and cows and uh you know a raptor getting stuck in the middle of the race course like you really don’t know what you’re going to see and you know at the end of the day you really want to have that adventure but you need to be safe you want to have a safe run you want to have a clean run yes i want to be able to say i clicked off 500 miles in three days like we were able to and right you know i got a leaky front diff but you know car loaded into the trailer no we didn’t really lose anything we had the full experience so that’s all i agree i’m gonna piggyback on that um everybody has a group that they ride with they have their guys that they ride with and everybody has that one guy i wouldn’t suggest that baja is the place to take that one guy the one guy that’s ricky racer that’s trying to be the fastest guy and beat the crap out of it because as nick said a 500 mile pace is much different than uh let’s go to the sand dunes we’re leaving camp we’re gonna go to vendor row and come back you know so that’s part of baja when you’re stuck out in the middle of nowhere when i say it’s the middle of nowhere it’s the middle of nowhere so baja fixes you can’t have too many hose clamp zip ties duct tape wire can’t have too much of that stuff in your in your toolbox when you go out there yeah no doubt so well cool uh thanks everyone for checking it out our this pod uh wes has fun always chatting talking baja um we gotta plan our trip where i’m really bummed you weren’t part of our ride but we gotta plant another one and get back down there i mean when i whenever i get this speed whenever that happens i wanna take it down to baja and see how she holds uh there’s a couple times one of the guys on our rides one of my buddies fred has some 35s by the way people razor turbo s 3500 miles been running 35-inch tires since day one he has not burnt one belt he knows how to drive he’s not a slowpoke he’s about it the 35 we were jealous of the 35s in a lot of different spots that’s kind of what i’m one of the reasons why i’m most excited about the speed because it looks like it’s finally a utv that’s built for 35s and right ground clearance would have been would have been rad but my 33s were were awesome as well yeah absolutely killer time man the video rocks i’m excited for the time where i can go with you guys again cool man we’ll uh could catch up with you thanks for watching you guys like the content please like and subscribe check out our website supercar offload and uh we have some exciting new products we’re working on uh we’re gonna be doing some photo shoots for that pretty soon and releasing and uh hopefully if you guys are in southern california come see us at the sand show it’s coming up in september uh really excited on that event really trying to plan now so we show up with some cool products and stuff you wouldn’t expect from us some exciting new uh versions what you have seen and that’s a good show you know very few times of the year west we get to like hang out and uh we’re talking to you virtually but like yeah it’s so fun to go to glamis and shake hands people who are you know like what we’re doing or just fans of whatever you know enthusiasts and the sand shows me one of those events so wes and i are gonna be chatty kathy’s ready to hang out and see some of you guys in real life and talk shop and hopefully we talk baja we talk glamorous we talk whatever so i’m really looking forward to that event me too can’t wait man it’s coming up quick all right we’re signing off until next time see you.