ODO: 315,043
Once we turned onto pavement it was obvious the truck needed something. To drive straight the wheel was turned 15 degrees off center. We knew there was a gas station coming up in twenty or so miles, so our plan was to stop there (hopefully they had gas), and give the Tacoma an alignment and cross our fingers that it would be enough. We pulled in, and both trucks got out all their tools so we could see if we had what we needed. Thank goodness for well stocked vehicles. Berne crawled under the front and got to work. He would make an adjustment, call out instructions to KoKo, and repeat until the steering wheel was relatively straight again. Seeing nothing else concerning, we filled up (they still had some gas left) and got back on the road.
At this point our little convoy was tired. We had all been awake since the day before. There were multiple people in each vehicle, so there was some amount of swapping to keep us moving north. Around 8am we were a ways ahead of the car so we found a wide spot to pull off and nap and eat and stretch for an hour or so.
Continuing on, we were headed to a spot where the car was going to turn onto the highway for a long speed zone shortly after our final driver change. Yes, the highway is part of the race course, no, they don’t close it. Fun fact, the entire race course is made of real roads, all of which are open during the race and it’s not uncommon to run across locals going about their normal business on the course during the race. Wild, right? When the race turns onto the highway it becomes a speed zone and you will be penalized for going too fast. To help our car, we met it on the highway and provided it a speed controlled escort. HellTrain drove in front, set their cruise control, and made it easy for our racecar to maintain it’s speed zone speed for the next 60 miles.
After we said goodbye to the racecar, we got to enjoy a nice drive up the peninsula. By nice, I mean long. Our job was to put down miles and be where we could help the car. Drive, wait, repeat. We caught more and more of the other chase trucks as we brought up the rear. We would stop at places the race course ran along the road to watch and cheer before getting back to work.
One of our stops was the final pit of the race. We try to always have someone at the pit just in case. One time BFG forgot to fuel the car and we ran out of gas, so, you know. Just as we were about to pull out of the pit, an eagle eyed BFG volunteer noticed the passenger rear brake caliper was missing a bolt. Now it was all hands on deck. We still had a sizeable lead, but you never know how long a fix will take. We needed a caliper bolt, it was an oddball metric fine thread and we didn’t have one. It was a mad scramble through all available bolts, and eventually we found a bolt that was too long and were able to stack washers and make it work. Time to get back on the road!
As the sun began to set on the car for the second time, the rain started. Heavy rain. The kind of rain that turns the desert into a giant flooded, impassible mud hole. At this point in the race we had lost a skid plate, body panels, and the iPad wasn’t working (back up navigation). We still had the couple hour lead Mike had started us off with, and a few hundred miles left. That’s still a lot of race, and anything can happen at any time (especially with no skid plate), so the choice was made for the final drive team to slow down, make safe choices and just bring ‘er home. This is a hard thing for a competitor to do. You want to get after it, drive your heart out, but you also want to win so you have to be smart and make good choices.
In full darkness now, we had one last chase stop to make to wait for the racecar to pass, but with the rain, it was tricky going. We needed to make sure we didn’t get stuck in case the car got stuck and we needed to go get it. Luckily they made it past us, and we were cleared to head to the finish line in Ensenada. Now that the car was in front of us, and in the home stretch, we needed to hustle. Safely, of course.
Tune in next week for the big finale!
