Desert Dingo Racing

October 30, 2008, San Jose, Calif, – Desert Dingo Racing and GoPro have teamed to capture and broadcast high quality digital in-car video during the 41st Annual Baja 1000 offroad race in Mexico this November.

Desert Dingo Racing competes in Class 11, which is limited to pre-1983 Volkswagen Beetles and allows for only minor modifications to the engine and suspension. The Desert Dingo VW (No. 1102) is the official World Diabetes Day car in the race and the team is hosting a drive-a-thon fundraiser to raise money for diabetes awareness and education programs conducted by the International Diabetes Federation.

“We’ve tested a couple of different camera setups in the car and were never satisfied with the results,” said Desert Dingo team member Jim Graham. “GoPro’s Motorsports HERO unit is extremely durable - which is crucial for desert racing - and the 170-degree field of view will let us capture all the action.”

Read the entire press release here.

Found this video on Baja Racing News. I’ll be walking this part of the course. Or someone else can drive this section.

One of the last things Eric and Sam did before buttoning up the car was to tune the engine. Adjust the valves. Check. Adjust the timing. Check. Pour a bottle of beer in the carburetor. Check.

(Note that this Corona has a slice of lemon in it).

For the record, the engine ran remarkably better after the beer.

Baja Racing News has posted a video from VW Motorsports on the history of VW racing down in Baja. You can check it out here. Eric Solorzano’s red Beetle makes an appearance.

I shot this from where we were set up in Watsonville Plaza as part of the diabetes health fair.

We loaned Stephan one of our race radios for his assault on the Baja 500…on a motorcycle. Here’s his report.

Here is a YouTube video that gives a pretty good taste of the race (at least at the starting line). Note in the opening seconds of the video, you can see yours truly desperately trying to start my bike at the starting line.

Hello again,
Well, we made it back…alive.

To those of you who attempted to track my progress, you may have noticed that my tracker stopped somewhere around mile 13. This is, as far as I can figure, about the time I did a 37 mph face plant on a blind corner courtesy of a class 25 ATV. The crash seemed to have knocked out my tracker, as well as much of my naïve optimism. It just got better from there…

It was the hottest day of the year up on the high desert, and according to several veterans, one of the hardest courses they had seen. I was equipped with a 2 liter camelback, which according to a friendly Mexican guy who gave me water, was about half as big as necessary. Dehydration was the word of the day (repeating in my head). Anyway, things were going pretty well, until the trophy trucks caught up to me. For those of you who don’t know, a trophy truck is an 800+ horsepower million dollar race truck (one was clocked at 110 mph on a river bed this year). They don’t really have a lot of patience for motorcyclists. Luckily, I was warned off the track by a panicked pit crew, and a film helicopter, and avoided being squished by one of the most impressive feats of engineering and horsepower I have ever seen.

After the trophy trucks went by, I continued on my merry way, climbing over an exhausting boulder strewn rock summit, and dropped into a dried lakebed for several hours of wonderful deep silt riding (which I really can’t recommend highly enough). I still had reasonably high (if somewhat delusional) expectations, until I hit the cactus.

Everything in the desert seems to have thorns, and if you run into some of them at 40 mph, it does have adverse affects. My right hand swelled into something resembling a guava with finger tips. I made it another 10 miles, when I decided that laying down under a tree in the 105 degree heat was a fine idea. It was the most peaceful place I had ever been. Everything seemed fine, until a desert lady/vision appeared with several bottles of water and said “you don’t look too good son”. I assured her that I was fit as a fiddle, and everything was going according to plan, and if she had an extra gallon of water, I would be back in the race. She didn’t.

Well, to make a long story short, I made it to mile 232 before nightfall and my better judgment took over. I ceded the race to the desert and vowed to return next year with more water and a little more updated motorcycle.

Thank you to those of you who were concerned about my well being.

The hardest thing I have ever done, and truly a great adventure.

Stephan

The production on this piece Race Dezert is actually pretty good compared to a lot of work out there. Don’t blink or you’ll miss us.

Click here or on the image to watch the video.

Update: I had an email exchange with Youcef. He finished 10th overall and second in the 8th leg, despite the fact that he broke his sternum. On the eighth stage of the 3,000 km rally, doing 100 km/hour, he went straight over his handle bars. “I woke up with a helicopter next to me. The medics decided I would be okay to carry on. I only noticed (my sternum) was broken a couple of days later.” I think he’s Baja material.

Australian rider Youcef Cummings is piloting the official World Diabetes Day motorcycle and will be competing in World Cross Country Rally and other regional events throughout Africa and the Middle East this year.

His first race, which began April 23 and ran for nine days from Marseilles, France through the deserts of Tunisia and Libya, ended today after covering 3000 kilometers.

Youcef rides a KTM 690 Factory Rally bike. It has a 72 hp engine with a top speed of over 175 km/hour on sand. The motorcycle is a limited edition factory produced bike designed specifically for desert racing. It has a range of over 350 kilometers and is fitted with navigation and survival equipment, including GPS, proximity warning devices, directional repeaters, two odometers and speed warning devices. The motorcycle sports the official World Diabetes Day logo in English and Arabic, as well as the distinctive blue circle on the tanks.

We wish Youcef the best of luck.

I figured I’d do a walkaround of 1101 for those who haven’t seen it up close. 1117 is stripped for painting before I start on the interior.

We did the photo shoot today. Like any photo shoot, you need a lot of stuff.

First, you need a car.

Second, you need talent. That would be Charlie.

You need “below the line people” like Skid and Shawn, who showed up fashionably late on Saturday after I already had 2.5 wheels bolted on the car. They did however, cinch 1101 onto Skid’s trailer for the trip to Felton, so that’s cool. Shawn did fix the muffler and Skid did something that made a lot of noise that probably perturbed the neighbors, however.

Then you need the guy who can pretty much do anything, like “Hey, this tow bar won’t fit. How can we get the car up to the airport?” And he says “My Sawz-All will take care of that.” That would be Richard.

Then, when you’re on site, there’s everyone who makes it happen. Jeff Luhn, Brooks Institute photographer, Max Davis, who created our brand identity, Roxanne, who handled catering (in the video). Rich and Elvon Hoogner who gave us access to the runway. And Larry, of Larry Electric, who’s the guy you want in your corner who pretty much can do anything when all you need to do is ask. (He’s in the video). Larry provided the boom truck.

Here’s a video of the morning.

I drove up the the Bonny Doon Airport this afternoon to get a look in advance of next Sunday’s photo shoot. In a word, it’s ideal. Ok, that’s two words.

Here’s a 30-second video shot with our new Flip, which we’ll be testing as an in-car camera.

And here’s a Geico commercial from today’s NASCAR race in Mexico City. This kid strangely reminds me of Skid, right down to the toothpick and sunglasses.