San Felipe is a small town on the northern east coast of the Baja California peninsula. It’s a charming Mexican fishing village that for the majority of the year sits patiently awaiting its most anticipated happening of the calendar; The SCORE San Felipe 250. A race that is round 1 of the World Desert Racing Championship, and highlighted and bookended by the infamous Baja 1000.
The week leading up to this race is a steady stream of trucks toting buggies, motorcycles, and trophy trucks to the village. The local kids line up to see their racing heroes, patiently waiting for autographs and stickers. The local parents pull up chairs on the Malecon with an ice chest full of cold cervezas to watch the absurdity of machines that have become modern off-road racing.
Ciaran Naran, Nick Lapaglia and I (Forrest Minchinton) are generally happy as can be lounging beachside, drinking Mai Tais or having a romp on some vintage two-wheeled machines out at my ranch. Every now and then, we get the wild hair to test ourselves at some of the most brutal desert racing events this side of North America.
That’s where the story starts, replacing fruity cocktails with a telephone to see what kind of machinery and gear we could wrangle. Fortunately, we hit the ground running, picking up a brand-new Husqvarna FE501, and gathered together the best goodies and parts from all our favourite brands and kind supporters. The group effort resulted in a top-notch race machine that we registered for this year's San Felipe 250.
Like everyone else, we loaded our vans till the doors barely shut, with everything one would need to tackle a race like this. Well, nearly everything…. As it turns out the 3 prerunner motorcycles that we had ordered from Husqvarna hadn't arrived in time. “Pre-Running” the racecourse is crucial when racing in Baja. It gives the racer an opportunity to familiarize themselves with their section of the racecourse, strategize specific pit service locations, access points for chase vehicles, etc, etc etc. With no time to spare, I loaded up my trusty 2019 Honda Baja 1000 race machine, Ciaran borrowed a bike from a generous friend and Nick dusted off the cobwebs on his Dad’s 2007 KTM 525, lovingly nicknamed the “Peterbilt”, a real tank among the modern machines. As we have grown accustomed to doing, we all had a chuckle and made the best of the situation. After all, we are riding motorcycles in Mexico, what's not to like?
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