SCORE Journal - The Official Publication of SCORE Off-Road Racing
Issue link: https://read.uberflip.com/i/618747
my team and all the teams. If they are trying to take a sticker off the race truck it's because they want a souvenir, they are fanatics, it's great. At the Baja 500 I preran Ojos to Ojos everyday for six days, 12 hours a day. You get beat down and tired, two days before the race I'm over it and want to go home. Then the race happens and I'm not home for more than one day and I want to go back to Baja. I enjoy it all, the prerunning, the race, the people, the food. I've fortunate to have great people on the team that know Baja and have contacts up and down the peninsula. SJ: After this year's Baja 1000 a lot of people were complaining about the silt near Catavina and how tough the course was. Do you like the silt beds and other difficult sections of the race? RM: I want it tough. Why do we have 4.4 inch Fox Shox, and 39 inch tires, it's to conquer what is in the desert today. It's so we can go 70-100mph on the San Felipe pole line road. The technology has been developed to deal with the bigger holes and tougher courses. We race off road. Its more rewarding to win a Baja 1000 that has fog, silt, rain and mud. Do you want to race a Baja 1000 on pavement? Anyone can do that. I want it to be special and more difficult. The silt beds at this year's Baja 1000 were nowhere near as bad as they have been in the past. They have been much worse. Every silt bed that I know of there is a very easy way to go through it. If you do your homework you could probably drive a stock two wheel drive truck through any of the silt beds where people got stuck. You just need to know the way. In the old days before GPS that's what you had to do. You had to be smart because your vehicle wasn't capable, it's almost like people have turned into pussies now. 20 years ago there was not a vehicle in the race that could go through the silt and you had to find a way. Now everyone wants it easy, I'm totally against making it easier. I want it hard, and rough and nasty because it's a more rewarding finish, I want to earn it. Finishing this year's Baja 1000 is quite an accomplishment. You should feel really good about that. SJ: What is it like racing against the young guys like Lalo IN 2014 ANDY MCMILLIN, JASON VOSS, AND MACCACHREN WON THE SCORE BAJA 1000 WITH A LARGER TEAM COMPARED TO THIS YEAR'S WIN. GETSOMEPHOTO. 027 SCORE JOURNAL