Hopefully more like 22 hours for overall UTV. I think there are more teams doing it with two drivers than you think George. But no since in bragging about it, we are sitting down the whole time anyways.
I spoke with Marc last week and he was on the fence if he was even going to race because of his foot injury. If he does race I doubt that it would be solo given the injury he has.
He shattered his heel and lower foot about as bad as one could. Being the manly fuck that Marc is, he didn't give adequate time for healing before getting back to business. He didn't have much of a choice. His FreestyleMX business was in full swing, and Marc's involvement is instrumental to the success of said business. I was told that he nearly lost his foot as a result. The aunt B's they were giving him to save his foot were too strong to be administered through a natural vein without risking irreversible damage to the vein, so they had to run a tube from his arm into his chest to administer the antibiotics. It's my guess that he won't be seeing any seat time soon, as he was told that if he raced the 1000, there was a good chance he would lose his foot, hence complicating his chances of ever kicking ass (pun intended) again in the future! Marc is family, and I feel bad for his struggles, regardless of how we parted ways. Although, karma
is a bitch.
For the record, Marc did have an arrangement with a pretty reputable driver to co-drive this race with him. I'm not in the position to name-drop here, but suffice it to say that the arrangement was with a professional race car driver, and that it would have again focused the pre, AND most likely, post race attention to MB Motorsports.
Johnny, I can relate to sitting in the "Oh shit!" seat. It is unsettling at first, but pretty awesome once you recognize the increased capabilities of the vehicle in which you are shit, ahem, I mean sitting in. I had the same experience after finishing Mc M's class 8 way back when, during its maiden test session. I thought, "surely he sees those 30" deep rollers directly in our path, right?" Based on my racing experience up to that moment (which was challenger, 5-1600, and old school class 8), I was sure it was bucking bronco time. But before I could even brace for impact, the whoops were a non-issue. They were nothing more than a minor distraction at 80+ MPH. I could only imagine how much more impressive it would be with today's shock technology, and more favorable unsprung weight ratios. Even Scott, when driving the truck for the first time, would break out in random laughs of disbelief as the out of the box set up was doing its job. His only comparison was the truck before we rebuilt it, which we prepped and he raced in the '91 San Felipe 250. It was still the sucky Dave Shoppe design.
(On a side note, what was way cool about that race was that Scott had to race it in class 2 'cause Shoppe illegally moved the firewall back 3", and we didn't have time to change it before the race. When Scott finished just a few minutes behind Dave Shoppe,
immediately in line behind him, Shoppe got out and was staring at awe, looking over his old machine as to say, "How the fuck could he be have finished right behind me in that piece of crap?" I snapped a timeless image with my camera of him gawking.)
Anyway, you da' man Johnny, you da' man! Any testing videos out there of the truck
while under your ownership? I haven't even seen the thing yet. Good luck in Mexico.
And Matt, I don't know much about Wayne Matlock other than his early racing roots were similar to Marc's (i.e. Motorcycles and Mexico). What I do know, is that old man "Moneybags" would have:
- won in only his second race out,
- in a pro class,
- with no significant if any racing background to draw from,
- clutching victory from one of the most savvy drivers out there,
if it weren't for a refueling mis-step around RM 180 at last years Baja 500.
It taint half a bad story to tell the grand kids someday. I'm just sayin'!
Jagged pre running southern section of Baja 1k today. Typical Baja rough and tumble... sand, silt, rock, and more. A quick break at sunset illustrates the beauty of Baja.
