Doherty Motorsports at the Baja 250 2002

Doherty Motorsports

2002 Tecate SCORE Baja 250

March 1-3, 2002

Driver/Co-Driver - Mike Doherty/Eric Record

Crew - TUF Off-Road, Greg Krasnow, El Quesso

Mike Doherty #810 Baja 250 Race Report
by Mike Doherty

Well our attempt at another good finish at the SCORE San Felipe 250, will have to wait again till next year. The Doherty Motorsports Chevrolet, was beat by Baja again. We made approximately 75 miles into the race, and broke a front ball joint.

Our race weekend started out a fun and exciting trip to Baja. We had very nice accommodations in our 5 rooms, at the Hotel Cortez. They were right down on the beach, and there was a lot of room in the parking lot, for last minute prep. It was during "adjustments" in the parking lot before going downtown to tech; we had our first stroke of bad luck. One of the "weight jack" screws broke, during a change in ride height. After rounding up a welder from a fellow truck racer, and team owner, (Team Scoob #813), we repaired the problem, and headed off to tech.

Tech was held in beautiful downtown San Felipe, where we had no problems, and a great lunch at a nice sidewalk cafe, and watched the crowds looking at the race cars going through inspection.

Race day dawned cool, and we prepared to head to the starting line, held at the edge of town, under the famous "San Felipe Arches". We were to start in 10th position, out of the 15 starters in our class. My co-driver (Eric Record, from Las Vegas), turned on the in-car camera, (that was supplied to us by "Y-Not Productions"), as we got a green flag. We started out confident and headed north, out of San Felipe.

Sunrise, San Felipe, Race Day, by Tom Stewart

After a few miles, it started to become clear to us, that the rear end set-up was not happy on the terribly rough Baja course. Later, we were to discover that the shocks had not been adjusted to the "new" ride height adjustment made the day before. The shocks were now getting a pounding, in a different by-pass zone, than they were originally set for. We continued on, struggling with a bad handling truck, hoping for a better section that we could make up time in. Eventually, after 25 miles or so, the course did make its way into some fast sand washes. I told Eric "to hold on, as we will now make up some lost time". In this terrain, the truck really ran great, and we were having a great time. The in-car camera recorded us passing back 12 cars in 15 miles. We were smokin'.

Next comes the bad part. After racing down the 20 miles or so of wash, we came upon a fast road along a dry lake bed, which ended in a silt area. A few miles into the silt, we hit a hidden ditch, and our front, passenger side ball joint, broke! And we had no spare on board. After 2 hours of down time, and a lot of help from the cowboy that owned the ranch the race was run on, we had patched her up, and slowly, made our way out on an access road. During the "shuttle" to the highway, we were able to get radio contact with the crew, and they met us at the friends house in the area known as Pete's Camp. Our race was over.

That evening, I fulfilled my commitment at the Competition Review Board meeting, (there were no protests) and began our last evening in San Felipe, with a nice Mexican dinner, at the restaurant at our Hotel. Sunday morning, we checked out, headed home, and stopped by Pete's Camp again to say goodbye to our friends. We then left San Felipe, on our 10-hour trip back home in Tucson.

Baja has beat me again, my luck there has not been that good since driving for Team Vanderwey, during the Baja 2000. Thanks again, to all my friends, sponsors, and family, that traveled with me, to race in Baja. Even though we did not finish, I believe a good time was had by all, and we will be back, to try, try, again.