"Don't screw the pooch!"
It's more than freaky that the quotation, which was made famous in Tom Wolfe's book about the Mercury space program, The Right Stuff, is on perpetual playback because it's been 20 years since I read the book. Perhaps it's because I know that in the next 100 miles -- with any luck I'll cover it in four hours -- there are more ways to screw the pooch than Triumph the Insult Comic Dog ever dreamed of.
The notion of a racing Hummer seems highly unlikely, sort of like a flying elephant, but off-road racing is as much a test of durability as it is a speed contest. And in a stock class that allows few modifications, the Hummer has found its niche. Since Hummer teamed up with veteran off-road racer Rod Hall in 1993, the brand has 10 class wins at Baja -- eight with the militaryesque H1 and two with the H2. My outing in June 2006 was to be the first Baja run for a 2006 H3.
Hall's team is essentially a factory effort. GM engineers and fabricators built the H2 and the H3. "Baja is far tougher than any of our durability tests," says 51-year-old Hummer engineer Thad Stump. "We learn all sorts of little things. For example, we found that the wiring harness of the H2 chafed against the body during one race, so we rerouted it on all the production vehicles." Stump goes to all the races, frequently serves as navigator, and relays lessons learned at Baja back to the GM engineering centers in Arizona and Michigan.
The Baja-ready H3 shares most of its mechanicals with the street version because the class it runs in, Stock Mini, forbids wholesale changes. You'll find the usual gutted interior, safety cage, and racing seats, but underneath is mostly stock-H3 stuff. It has a less-restrictive exhaust-and-intake system that allows the 3.5-liter five-banger to make about 250 horsepower (stock is 220), which is not much when saddled with almost two-and-a-half tons of truck. The most significant change is that the shocks have been replaced with massive racing units that endure the incessant suspension movements encountered during a Baja race. Hummer doesn't sell race-ready trucks, but if you were to build your own, figure it would cost $20,000 on top of the price of a $29,995 H3.
There are two Tecate SCORE Baja races each year, the 500 and the 1000. The numbers refer to the approximate number of miles each covers. The courses change every year, sometimes running between Ensenada and La Paz, as in the original 1967 event, and other times -- like my 500 race last June -- starting and finishing in Ensenada, which is about 80 miles south of San Diego.
Among the 21 Baja classes for cars and trucks (motorcycles and ATVs also compete), the fastest is the Trophy-Truck class, which consists of purpose-built desert racers that cost several hundred-thousand dollars, have upwards of two feet of suspension travel, fly over the three-foot whoop-de-dos as if they were pennies on a street, and can effortlessly clear 100 mph on the smoother sections. These trucks have gotten so alarmingly fast that some think Baja has become too easy for the Trophy-Trucks. In the 2004 Baja 1000, the Trophy-Truck winner averaged more than 60 mph, an incredible pace for an off-road race. Baja organizer and SCORE International president and CEO Sal Fish has responded by making the courses rougher. During the drivers' meeting, Fish declares the 2006 course is the toughest he's ever laid out and gleefully adds, "We're putting the off-road back in off-road racing. This [race] is not for wussies."
That's fine for the Trophy-Trucks, which will have no trouble finishing the 425-mile course in less than the allotted 18 hours. Go more than 18 hours, and you're disqualified. The mostly stock Hummer, however, relies on the tortoise method and averages about 25 mph, depending on the severity of the course. To finish in 18 hours, we'll need to average at least 23.6 mph, with four pit stops for fuel and driver changes. Stopping to change a flat tire will likely end our chances.
To make matters worse, half the members of our four-driver team have zero off-road-racing experience. In addition to yours truly, the drivers are Alan Taylor (another greenhorn), the host of Car and Driver Radio; Rod Hall; and his son Chad Hall, 43.
I get a good sense of just how challenging our race will be when Stump, Rod Hall, and I drive my section -- the first 100 miles -- in a pair of stock H3s. This is a customary off-road practice called prerunning, whereby competitors drive the course before the race, record the positions of major obstacles into a GPS unit, and familiarize themselves with the route.
From the starting point in downtown Ensenada, the course winds through two miles of city streets before spilling into the region's dirt-lined water-runoff wash. This area of the Baja California peninsula is, if not mountainous like the Alps, quite hilly, and as the course snakes through the outskirts of the city, the ascents and descents get progressively steeper. Once clear of the sprawling city, the route consists of roughly 20 miles of curvy dirt roads that can be taken at close to highway cruising speeds.
From there, however, things get ugly. The course goes from being a dirt road to a trail barely as wide as the H3. Jagged rocks, some the size of bowling balls, are everywhere, as are holes and ruts deep enough to eat up a tire. It is so bumpy that we don't dare go much faster than 15 mph or we'll risk bouncing off the trail or ruining our backs. The scariest parts are the hidden obstacles, like the ditch that cuts across the trail at Mile 42. It is maybe five feet wide and two feet deep, with nearly vertical sides. It's effectively hidden by the turn that precedes it and the dirt that covers everything. The H3s could easily crawl through this chuckhole, but taken at any speed over 10 mph would probably disembowel the bottom of the car. This is one of about 20 deadly obstacles we'll have to remember to slow for. Stump records the positions into the GPS unit.
For no apparent reason, the dirt suddenly changes to the consistency of flour at Mile 43. The dirt is so fine that even stepping in it produces a dust cloud large and thick enough to have a gagging effect, and it hangs in the air like a fog. This graphite-like dirt covers only a 200-foot uphill section of the trail, but since the trail cuts across the side of a steep hill, there is no easy way around. To make matters worse, the tires from previous vehicles have created ruts that are not only unavoidable but also so deep that the H3s scrape their bottoms as we gun the engines and struggle to get through. Hall is betting some racer will get stuck here and block the trail, creating an off-road traffic jam.
Our starting position means that a roadblock would pose a serious problem. Racers start one at a time at 30-second intervals beginning at 6 a.m. The motorcycles go first, followed by the four-wheeled vehicles in a descending order of speeds, the fastest going first. The winner is determined by the lowest overall time for the whole course. We are set to start at 11:23 a.m., the 398th vehicle of 438 entries — almost last — so the fine-dust section will likely be a snarled-up quagmire by the time we amble along.
We can ill afford a race delay, so we backtrack a half-mile in our prerun and bushwhack a detour that I try to commit to memory. Not counting the hour we spend mapping out that detour, it takes us eight hours to complete the 100-mile recon. Much of that time is spent going back over the particularly hazardous sections and making sure Stump has all the hazards keyed into the GPS unit, but the course is so rough that most of the time we're barely going faster than a walking pace. The race-prepped H3, with its better shocks and tires, will likely be able to go faster, but speed is a Catch-22 — the faster you go, the more likely you are to hit an unseen rock or ditch. Maintaining that 23.6-mph average on race day seems highly unlikely.
Back in the motel parking lot that night, the headquarters of Team Hummer, the tension is palpable. Taylor reports that the section he scouted that day was more like rock crawling than driving and even slower than mine. We'd need a perfect race, with no mistakes, to simply finish in time, yet with two beginners in the lineup, a screw-up seems inevitable.
If there is one bright spot as we get in line for the start on that 75-degree sunny June day, it is that if we complete the course in fewer than 18 hours, we're guaranteed a podium finish. There are only two other trucks in our class, a Honda Ridgeline and a Ford Ranger, starting 30 seconds and one minute, respectively, ahead of us.
It isn't until the green flag flies that I'm able to rid myself of doubt. Sitting beside me, Stump is shouting instructions through our helmet radios to navigate the maze of streets, and I obey robotically. Our first taste of dirt yields an appreciated surprise as the race truck floats over the bumps far easier than did the unmodified H3. But before I get too comfortable, my first big test emerges.
We've only gone 10 miles and are still on the outskirts of Ensenada when a scene of complete chaos comes into view. Up ahead a few hundred feet is a wide-open, steep, rutted dirt hill maybe 100 yards tall and littered with racers scrambling hard upward only to lose traction and slide back down. Their spinning tires spit huge plumes of dust that coalesces into a thick fog just as we reach the base. I can't see a thing. Stump says calmly, "Go right. Let's go around this mess." We go far to the right and begin our ascent.
Even though I have the throttle floored, the hill is so steep that we aren't accelerating but simply maintaining perhaps 15 mph. About halfway up at a crawl, the dust cloud blows our way and once again blocks any vision out of the truck. Two seconds later, the dirt fog clears, but to my horror, directly in front of us, is a crowd of spectators scrambling to get out of our way. No one knows exactly how many people watch the race, but it's estimated to be 100,000. Crowds tend to gather at places where vehicular carnage is inevitable, like this hill, and the viewers also seem to enjoy getting dangerously close to the action, perhaps replicating the thrill of cheating death from the sidelines. I'm sure I give some of them quite a scare because I don't dare lift off the gas or we'll get stuck like all the rest. So I keep it floored and silently pray.
When we get to the top, Stump gives me the news that we've already moved up in the standings. While I'm transfixed looking ahead, he gets a good look at the stuck cars and is thrilled to see the two other trucks in our class stuck on the hill as we go by.
That success isn't much of a relaxant. I keep trying to go fast without being reckless, a fine line I feel as if I step over every mile. The race H3 is so adept at soaking up bumps that on the dirt-road section I'm able to cruise through at 60 mph. My only fear is that I'll forget the detour and drive into the waiting dust bowl.
I have no need to worry, however, because the race organizers have performed a last-minute course change around that obstacle. Once we know we're past it, I think I'm in the clear. I am wrong.
At Mile 60, we run into the Baja equivalent of an L.A. traffic jam. This part of the course is a one-lane-wide trail that cuts an angle up and across the face of a steep hill. There are perhaps 15 or 20 vehicles simply stopped in a line when we come upon the scene. We can't easily go around because the trail is flanked by the steep hill on the right and a precipitous drop-off on the left.
Most of the cars ahead are tube-framed rear-drive buggies that don't have the scampering ability of four-wheel drive like we do. We could crawl to the right and pick our way through, but it is so hard to see that Stump has to get out and serve as a guide as he walks in front of the Hummer.
When we finally get close to the source of the bottleneck, my mouth goes dry. Two buggies are simultaneously trying to ascend the steepest part of the trail. They don't have enough traction for forward progress and helplessly spin their wheels. They need to back up, make a run at it, and use momentum to carry on through, but the traffic jam behind prevents them from doing that. To make matters worse, the pair is side by side, which prevents us from going around on the right.
Just before we settle in to wait for the mess to clear, I think I see Rod Hall standing off to the left. My initial thought is that the heat and stress of the race have finally made me cuckoo. The apparent hallucination turns out to be real, and I later learn that while Stump and I have been racing, Hall has been paralleling the course listening on a CB radio to chatter from the various race teams. When he learns of the jam, he makes a beeline to the scene and has already found a detour. I can tell from Hall's arm waving that he wants me to drive off the left side of the trail, which from my vantage looks like a plunge into the abyss. So I don't move. Then a scene develops that is probably comical to anyone watching: Hall jumps up and down while frantically waving his arms, attempting to convey with body language what he is surely thinking — namely, "GET EFFING GOING!"
Stump hops back in, and since he hasn't buckled his belts, I assume he thinks Hall's route is safe. So I drive the H3 off the edge.
To my relief, there is a small, hidden ledge off the left side of the trail that doesn't crumble when I put the H3's left side tires on it. We ride this ledge all the way past the stuck buggies and bounce back onto the main trail. The tortoise prevails yet again!
For the next 20 miles, I drive what I feel is insanely fast, trying to make up lost time. The H3 takes such a horrific beating that I'm sure I'm about to break it. I yell at Stump, "Am I hurting anything?" to which he yells back, "You're fine."
Every so often, we get the Baja signal to move over — a smart whack in the rear — by a faster buggy that we've passed on a choked hill. After four hours and 100 miles we pull into a clearing where the Hummer crew tops off the H3 and Chad Hall takes over driving duty. It's his turn to tempt fate.
The race is now out of my hands and in far more capable ones. At a little past 5 o'clock the next morning, our Hummer crosses the finish line with Rod Hall at the wheel, only 14 minutes before the 18-hour cutoff but first in Stock Mini. We have averaged 23.9 mph, which turns out to be fairly respectable, considering that the overall winner — a Trophy-Truck driven by Brian Collins and Larry Ragland — averages 44.1 mph. The hellish course takes its toll, and 60 percent of the four-wheeled vehicles don't make it, proving yet again that tofinish first, you first have to finish.
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