Monster Energy Trophy Truck Driver BJ Baldwin Takes the UTVUG RZR4 for a Spin!
The SCORE San Felipe 250 is arguably the funnest off road race in the world, and by far the funnest race in Baja in my humble opinion. I say this due to its festive party atmosphere, its relationship with the inner Baja peninsula coast line, and the fun yet challenging course that makes up this fantastic race. While the 250 is only half the distance of the Baja 500, and a quarter of the famed Baja 1000 most will tell you this is the most treacherous 250 miles in any of those 2 races. So while it is only a 250 mile race it is 250 miles of pure hell! The whoop sections and silt beds in at San Felipe are like no other!!
Now while I am a UTV guy, covering 4 UTV's in Baja is almost impossible. I am working on trying to organize the Baja UTV racers a little more so that we can do more for them but until then I am limited on the UTV race coverage I can provide. With that said I unfortunately was not able to get any UTV action shots, I did however get a chance to see 3 of the 4 racers and I am hoping we will here their own race re caps here on UTVUnderground. With that said I did get some awesome race photos thanks in large part to Mad Media who funded the trip for me and put me to work along with their team to cover the Monster Energy off road team.
Our goal was to conduct photo and video on all Monster Energy athletes competing in Baja. This included B.J. & Bobby Baldwin, Terrible Herbst, Cameron & Heidi Steele of the Desert Assassins, and Jeff "OX" Kargola. We performed pre race and post race interviews on these athletes as well as pre and post race photo and video work. Look for some awesome Monster Energy videos to come about from all this footage Mad Media collected.
The first order of business was to head over to BANDIDOS and collect our SCORE Media Credentials. From there we headed over to the Desert Assassins compound to get the pre race interviews with husband and wife team Cameron & Heidi Steele. Cam or PAB as he is called by his friends is probably one of the most recognizable racers in off road. He is the face of off road in many ways and is one of the most versed Baja racers in the world. Cam is also the face of Lucas Oil Off Road Racing Series on TV and you will see him often hosting events during Summer X-Games. He campaigns the #16 Trophy Truck while wife Heidi runs a class 6 truck of her own. She would go on to win this race and Cam would finish strong in his TT.
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The next task on our agenda was to haul butt over to contingency where the UTVUnderground RZR4 would be put to work. We rigged it up with a Mad Media camera and my task would be to lead BJ & Bobby Baldwin through continency while capturing the madness on video. This was an awesome experience as I have been down contingency a ton but never in a vehicle. It was funny for me to see people take pictures of me like I was someone..lol..better was the people who wished me luck the next day because they thought I was racing...hahaha
From contingency we jetted to BJ's hotel where we would have some of the most fun of the entire weekend. Here we would interview BJ and take portrait photos of him, his trophy truck, and his co-driver Johnny. But the fun was when BJ decided since his TT was already on the beach that he should atleast have some fun...hahhaha...well in true BJ fashion he threw it down and well, I will just let the pics and video do the talking.....hahhah
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We wrapped up the day with BJ by having dinner on the beach. We knew we needed to get up early so after a couple beers and some fun reminiscing we called it a day.
At 4:30am I heard the god awful sounds of Matt Martelli's alarm clock which reminds me of an alarm you would hear at the Pentagon during a nuclear attack. We got up, loaded up, and head off to our locations. We had 3 teams with Eddie and Myself running in the RZR4 all day!!! We were to cover the mayhem around Zoo Road which is around RM5. This pole line road houses a massivly long stretch of whoops which has been made famous in off road videos for years. This is the scene you see of the people parting like the red sea with Trophy Trucks flying by at 100mph +. We left from there after all the TT's cleared and raced them over to the "dike" at about RM85. Once we got the shots we needed there we raced the leaders back to about RM 222. That is where our 11 hour day on course would end. Once our job was complete we raced all the way back to Petes Camp where we were staying on the beach in a rented house.
I need to throw a special shout out to the DragonFire Racing team. Todd Romano and his guys were posted up at Rm108 waiting to pit Todd in the DFR class1 and the Nessy car. I was almost out of gas due to the soft washes we were running wide open in. His guys hooked us up with a full tank of 110 race fuel! hahah RZR4 has never ran stronger!!! They also jump started the RZR4 after I had left the LED light bar on all day long and didnt realize it. So thank you DFR for saving my day!
On that note I want to throw shout outs out to the homies at Mad Media for once again making me feel like one of the family. I was lucky enough to not only get to roll with Mad Media but we also stayed around the way from my other Baja family, All German Motorsports who were racing in the Trophy Truck class with the infamous Pistol Pete Sohren. They also loaned there bad ass flat bed to me to tow the RZR4 into baja with! Another Baja race in the bag and I cant wait till the Baja 500 in June!!!! Until then enjoy the pics..............
Monster Energy Off-Road Team SCORE San Felipe 250 Extended Photo Gallery! » race-deZert.com
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