At the recent SCORE Tecate Baja 1000, I rode with Protruck racer, Steve Scaroni. I hitched up with the Imperial Valley vegpacker to get a feel for the quality of the Protruck series in support of an in-depth status report on the growing class. My assigned race vehicle duties included acting as the right seat navigator, the obstacle warn-er, an intercom-er, a calming influence (!) on the driver, a race radio-er (including to our own Pierce Aviation aircraft!), the look-out at our "six o?clock," a (potential) mechanic, a lighting controller, and the engine health display monitorer ... you know -- P(oil), T(oil), T(transmission).

Plus colour commentary on said radio to the myriad of mobile and fixed pit personnel. And taking mental notes. Duh.

We even used the radio relay to-and-from our eye-in-the-sky to "ask" a slower competitor to move over so we could haul ass in the dusty, dusk conditions of the arroyos ? where the wind never blew.

He did ? and he did!

The result was an acceptable 11th Overall Pro finishing position and a Third in the tough "Protruck" class . The race car was fitted with a Leon Patton Chevy V8 and, of course, 2-wheel drive. Car #227 experienced only one flat tire in whole event, and that was not on MY "shift.? We covered the entire course at an average of 38.111 average mph. Ah, retirement has been so leisurely!!!

The course was a goodly portion of the last Baja 500 ? twice. Through the Pine Forest, from the start at Ojos Negros, and across Highway 3 several times to Alamo and Jamau to VT and Mike?s ... then over to the Pacific and Santo Tom?s ? and back through Three Brothers to Ojos.

Repeat as desired. Note: Avoid all "caguama?-swilling spectators as required.

Protrucks were (finally) awarded an up-front start, behind the Class 8s and ahead of the ?10s? and the ?SCORE Lights? ? the beam-VW ?Tens.? ? by virtue of their increasing level of performance in recent races. Go fast; start up front.

Steve had requested the Rear Start, however.

While getting out of Ojos Negros, up in the rocks and hills leading to the Pine Forest, starting co-driver (and Steve?s son) Matt Scaroni radioed in that he and driver, Curt Leduc, got stuck in a traffic jam and had to get out to get going. This put the Ford behind a gaggle of luckier Protrucks. And some ?Tens.?

Protruck novice, Rich Hoffman (Lake Forest, IL), had said, before the event, that he was going to take it easy. ?I have only one hour in this truck. I?ve only been driving buggies.?

Well, the buggies drove Rich buggy. He was ?putting? along, bein? careful, and got a little out of shape on some rain ruts. An impatient ?1600? (is there another kind?) tapped him and put the ?EJR? Chevy over onto the brand-spanking-new show-quality Wally World paint job. They were there for ?some time,? shall we say.

Heading into the KM77 Highway 3 road crossing, the trucks were pretty much in a line, with Leduc now straggling back. They surprisingly passed a suddenly-idled Larry Plank, in the yellow Scott Steinberger ?Pennzoil? car: ?I have no Pennzoil sponsorship this year,? said Scott. ?But I did get a lot of oil ??

One Step Behind! Finishing in just under 20 hrs. at over 33 mph, Scott Stienberger brought the Penzoil / PCI Ford F-150 in for a 4th place finish behind the Scaroni Protruck. After a 100% finish rate earlier in the season, the Protruck class saw 50% atrition at the big show in Mex.

Steinberger?s PCI truck had broken yet another axle in 1999, this one after only eighty miles of off-road racing. ?The other failures were broken at the spline (a likely point for stress concentration - Ed.) ? this one was in the center of the shaft.?

Fact: These axles are big suckers. This suggests that there was an additional stress component acting, in addition to the normal and not unexpected torsional stresses of a VB power plant. Such as ? (flexure) bending of the axle due to a distorted housing? His crew had one deuce of a time getting the broken stub free and had to pull the other side and pound the offending piece out.

The crew then suffered a mis-call on the location of the upper light bar. Due to the time lost with the axle, the bar was now way up in Ojos, and Scott was not. ?We had to drive twenty miles (without the big lights),? Scott smiled. (Note: Don?t worry. If there was ANY dust in from Uruapan, you couldn?t use the top lights anyway.) He also broke an upper ball joint. ?We changed the limit straps.?

On the highway, after the Goat Trail, to the Kiliwas VT turnoff, the yellow Mike Griffiths/Pete Estler ?Excite? truck was sidelined, with the Mike twiddling his thumbs. They had ?lost? a drive line coming down the Goat Trail at a high rate of speed ? ?5,000 in third gear,? according to Crew chief Greg Foutz ? and the failing, flailing, propeller shaft took the out bell housing off the automatic transmission. (Photo)

The whipping tube also cleaned out all the wiring from the batteries: no radio, no GPS, no nada.

Mike?s co-driver hitch-hiked back to the Alamo BFG pit for help. Greg said that changing the transmission was no big deal. ?We pulled it off the Highway over to a gravel pit. But re-wiring the car was the major chore. It took us four hours! We used thirty butt connectors. And we were making time and sounding great,? said Foutz, the Mesa (AZ) race prep man. He was pleased that they had ?Pain-Less Wiring Systems? as a sponsor! (Note: Scaroni?s truck [also?] seemed to have an unpleasant vibration, as noted while on the pavement out of Santo Tom?s.)

Mosh Pit? Not Exactly, but close. The Baja 1000 course was heavily rutted from incliment weather and the recently run "Baja 500". Never one to shirk off a good challenge, ORC's resident headbanger Tony Tellier threw himself (and his driver, and a their Protruck) bodily into their work. You can do that with over 22 inches of wheel travel ya know !

Pete and Mike houred-out, even though they got around the course. Good try. The truck came in without any bed panels and missing the right front fender. They then headed up to Mike?s for the run back down through Simpson?s Ranch, to the Valle de Trinidad Power Station, and our turn in the racer. Getting the crews into the ?Big Rock? area was worse than the usual Power Station left-hand turn: it was chucky-jam filled with chasers trying to park on a one-lane road. We went X-country through the weeds and washes.

There were more old faces at VT than in a Yuma ?Furr?s Cafeteria?:

John Anderson ? now working for PPI.
The Earl of Roberts, banded (not banned) for Honda ?just in case. John Alabaster getting ready to go racing with his daughter Melia in son-in-law?s Tony Carlson?s ?1600.?
Dean Bayerle (to be heading for a ?Class 8? victory!).
Dan Worley (Class 12); and long-suffering Stuart Chase associates, Tommy Medina and Scotty Urquhart, from Swift Engineering

We lit out from the BFG pits at the Valley T ?Big Rock? carrying three spare rear tires ? one for the Dave Sundquist #1004 car ? as Robby Gordon?s team was busy swapping out a busted transmission. With three BFG ?Bajas? and a full tank of VP, we were grossed out. Can?t say that the rear end wasn?t getting traction!

Sean Sessa had clipped that narrow cattle guard?s massive concrete abutment, wiping out both tires on the right side. Jeff Knupp said, before we left BFG, that Sean would radio me as to which side of the course he would be on and the general area: ?I?m on the right past the meadow with the lake!? Sean actually had had to continue on to find a spot wide enough to park, which was more than a couple miles down the road and around a left-hand sweeper. His Greer/Geiser/Sessa car was on the outside of the turn.

We screeched to a halt and Sean got the tire, but struggled with the ratchet strap, eventually giving it up, as Steve was getting edgy on the gas and the brake. Sean bundled the strap and tossed it into the cab. Scaroni stressed that I keep the strap away from my feet and his neck ? just in case the strap got loose and snagged something, like on a tree, or the driveshaft. Scaroni looks after the well-fare of his crew like a momma duck.

With Robby quickly getting his tranny back into place ? the skid plates were going back on ? I was watching my ?six? while also looking for the reflective warning ribbons placed during pre-running: ?1? ?2? or ?3? markers indicated the level of Big Trouble!

These subtle clues worked to perfection and we did not have to guess or worry. Just slow down when notified. You didn?t see them? Oh.

My right hand mirror had loosened on its screws, so I had to keep putting it back into position. The twisty mountain pass to Llano Colorado ? ?The Red Plain? ? made course checking fairly easy, as you could see across the valleys. There was no sign of the Toyota TT. Good deal.

The Trinidad portion of the road to the ocean had been bladed recently. The locals use it as a quick-and-dirty route across the mountains, avoiding going into Ensenada. It was deteriorated in the hills, with exposed bed rock and cut banks.

Going over the ?PPI? pit hill into the vineyards, we found the Glen Greer #108 buggy sidelined with a broken uniball on a rear arm. He radioed that he needed a new ?Heim? and parts for the damaged CV and axle. Radio contact in the narrow, deep valley was non-existent.

Greer?s Tucson pit on Highway One was out of touch and it was almost before the Highway that I could raise the crew and tell them what was required.

Going in would be a hard task, as they would have to come in on the course from Trinidad. Going in backwards would be totally out of the question. Call it ?suicide,? if you will.

?We (Me and Scooby) were strapped in and on the way up-course after them, when they radioed in with news that some locals were pulling them out for a hundred bucks. Disappointment set in then; not feelin' so bad now.?

Ron ?Donkey? Dalke and Big Al Vesterdal were smiling and waving at the ?108? pits ? but not smiling for long. Dalke then got in the #1004 car of Steve Kucker, driving to his second DNF of the day. If it wasn?t for Bad Luck, Ron would have no luck at all.

We encountered no other cars on the way to the coast: neither racers nor local yokels. They must gotten the word. At the village of San Jose, there were loads of spectators, but no traps. Our launch into the little wash by the houses had some lookie-loos scattering like chickens.

On Mex 1, we had little traffic in our direction and made the transition back onto the dirt clean and quick. I hate off-road race cars on the ?tar.?

Didn't Y'all See That Ditch? Team Herzog has seen better days. For the full scoop on how one gets themselves into such situations, check out ORC's "Spectating the Spectators", elswhere in this issue!

After the packing shed, a few miles in, at the BFG pit, we saw the black Licitra and Herzog Protruck being serviced. (The ?99 ?Baja 500? had been their first race and they won at The Primm!) It appeared that it was only a normal service, so I kept Steve abreast of the possible closure from the rear. ?I see nothing!? (It turned out that they smacked a steering box ? a long-term swap if there ever was ? )

Herzog out. Four running out of eight starters. Scott way back.

Those craggy hills that guard Highway 1 from the Pacific were clear of all traffic, except for a black and white two-seat ?1?? car that was on its lid a few miles from Check 4. Both racers were out of the car and waved us on. Steve told the Checkpoint captain about the incident and we got off the bladed road into some real off-road racing.

SCORE?s well-used race track to Erindera was rude and rock-filled, bounded by the pineapple-like ?Stuart Chase? bushes. The deep drainage cuts had bad uphills and we elected not to use the more-obvious short cuts: Steve had high-centered the F150 pre-runner in the days prior. The Leon Patton-powered Chevy had to problems climbing the stair-steps. I would wager that a 5-1600 VW could not make that same statement.

I radioed to our crew, positioned along the sea cliffs west of town, that ?Race Two-Two-Seven cleared The Combine.? Steve and Dave Webster had found a trick road that paralleled the ?Rio San Isidro? river bed, so we skirted the soft whoops and deep barrow pits and got on a hard-packed two-tracker used by the area residents. We quickly got up to sixty, just like that, rather than floundering in the soft stuff and looking for the very real possibility of a tank trap.

The cobble bed, i.e., ?Pebble Beach,? as it were, was handled easily, but at the transition back to the dirt, there was a deep V-notch that we had forgotten or ignored. We stuffed it in hard, but came out clean. (see Photo).

Rich Hoffman (#244) did not fare so well. He shattered a wheel here and was vaulted (almost)

into a spectator and his car: ?That ol? boy was scrambling to get inside his truck (for safety?s sake).? Rich limped to our pit, less than a mile away, for a tire change. We stopped at Erindera for more fuel and the upper light bar. Scott tightened the mirrors and Davie messed with the torn-off wiring on one of the fog lights; Webster then wisely held us in the pits ? against Scaroni?s intense admonitions ? as the green machine of Gordon roared past. ?Phwew,? we breathed a collective sigh of relief. ?Dodged another bullet!?

Note: This was certified ?Good Thing, ? as Robby had already drilled the Steve Myers ?10? car at Checkpoint 4, and might have had a feeding frenzy from the scent of blood. DQ. - Ed.)

Robby?s dust hung like a curtain. We had become spoiled on our Rare Air run from Valle de Trinidad, and we did not appreciate it. But dealt with it.

Just up the road from the pit, the local clowns had closed off the straight-shot cattle guard, forcing an unexpected jiggety-jog through the fence. In the dust, we jigged, but did not jog, and sailed right off the road into a four-foot tidal depression at a good speed ? with no untoward consequences! Steve burned a hard ?360?? and we charged out of the hole, back underway. Dropping no more that ten seconds, at the most. I was not taking data, however.

As the road climbed over the basalt headlands, we could see Gordon?s trail over the distant hills. Even though he was long-gone and way outa sight, his dust would be-devil us for many more miles. After a five mile spell in clear air, we once again encountered some light dust, growing denser by every mile. ?What is it?,? Steve asked. ?I dunno,? I muttered.

We continued to reel in the vehicle. Was it a racer? A chaser? A local? We soon found Chris Wilson in his to-be-Class 8 winning street-legal pre-runner. Chris was battling the loss of one of his front brake lines., o he was playing it cool. Wilson, who had changed his entry from Sportsman to Pro at the last minute, saw our car across the switchbacks and thoughtfully pulled over when we got within ?striking? distance. Not that we hit him, one must understand.

Our trip to Santo Tom?s was fast and uneventful, other than a momentary off-course excursion on a fast left-hand sweeper near the Honda pits. As we neared the Highway 1 access at El Palomar, there were more and more spectators ? never a calming sign.

Steve needed a visor change: the black one was becoming unacceptable as the sun ducked behind the hills. We radioed Air Relay Phil for a crew to meet us at Uruapan ? the clear visor was in a protective bag behind the driver?s station.

Gary Estrada and the crew were along the highway north of the restaurant and they did the unsnap-snap procedure with a little bit of trouble: ?Hurry, but do not rush.?

Highway One up to Uruapan was scary as hell. I told Steve that ?I didn?t want to die today? and he said that he ?didn?t want to kill me today.? Fair enough!

Our highway traffic was pretty hip: one car motioned for us to pass on the shoulder ? which we did at a high rate of speed. A line of vans and semis then waved us on past. We blew off the gnarly uphill short cut: our chase crew later told of seeing the Riviera four-wheel drive buggy go up there and expire in a cloud of death smoke ? a transmission was out, according to unreliable sources.

We bailed of the asphalt down into Uruapan and right into the dust of Dick Sasser?s Cherokee Trophy-Truck! In the gathering gloom, our lights were ineffective in the crud. We could not make any inroads into the gap ? the trees and rocks reached out at every corner. We were running on the ragged edge of disaster, even though going at 50% speed.

We radioed ?Phil-In-The-Sky? to get on Sasser?s channel and ?ask? him to pull over and let us by. I asked Phil to ask Dick how much it would take to have him pull over and if he took Visa. After what seemed a century ? it was maybe four miles ? Phil came back and said that Dick would pull over. But when? Well, when he found a spot wide enough for the extra-wide ?Jeepish.?

We owe Dick, for sure. We could now see the terrible ruts and erosion trenches on the weather side of the mountains. Overall winner, Johnny Campbell, reported falling in one of those. Only one? That water-pumper XR650R Honda musta had a big gyro, indeed!

Paging Kory Scheeler? He made it to Check 5, but mechanical problems dashed Kory Scheeler's dreams for a Class 1 win before Lap 2 even began. Laughlin anyone?

Car 114 (Kory Scheeler) was seen, abandoned, under a spreading Cottonwood tree. After getting by Big Dick, we saw no other race cars. Coming toward Ojos Negros, we saw a load of spectators camping on the outside of turns. When will they ever learn! I mean ? in the dark, too.

On the way in to Ojos ? lights a-gleaming like a jewel in the sepia night ? we radioed Relay that we wanted Mark ?Zonie? Cowan, who works for Craig Stewart?s Raceworks? shop, to crawl under the truck when we stopped for the crew change. Just to give a visual on the steering system as it was cycled left-to-right ? or right-to-left. Whatever. Precautionary, only. And check the frayed wiring on the fog light.

Scaroni was, later, able to radio up a power steering race ? once again ?just in case.? Our crew change-over at Ojos went OK, until they shut down the engine and it would not crank.

BFG wanted the car pushed off the marshalling pad and a quick check revealed that the starter need to be jumpered with a screw driver. ?Don?t kill it!,? was the terse instruction to Leduc and they split the scene.

SCARONI CHASE CAPERS

While the race vehicle performed admirably, there were glitches and goofs on the chase hardware. His wife?s diesel Suburban ? now liberally desert pin-striped ?would not re-start where we stopped near the KM77 road crossing. Mark got under ? apparently his forte ? and found that a fuel supply line had a loose connection: ?It?s sucking air,? he remarked as he tightened up the ?B? nut. End of tale.

However our EMT, Craig Reitz, got a desert stick stuck through the sidewall of a ?Big O? tire.

Big O? ?We pulled the stick out and ?plugged? it, which, of course ruined it.? It was ruined anyway. Craig, a Manufacturing Engineer at the El Segundo TRW facility, was prepared for any medical event ? even to delivering a baby. If anyone had ordered one. Steve?s F150 pre-runner, by the world-renown Geiser Brothers, had a rough race. We tore out a torque converter coming out of Mike?s a week before the race and I had to hitch out with Curt Leduc in John Gable?s pre-runner ? sharing the two seats with a Japanese rally driver who was doing a ?Way Out Baja Tours? trip. (Note: Those two-liter two-seaters are pretty cool.) . Then the F350 Super Duty crew-cab PowerStroker had to go in to the Simpson?s crossing for the tow out.

Scaroni then split to pre-run ?Terrible?s Town? in a rented Explorer ? he brings his own BFGs.

Carlo and Mark, the Zonie crew, had to re-do some cracking welds on the drag link support and tweak the lights and tighten down ? or up ? the (anti)-roll bar?s spline clamps.

Race day, the C6 started to make ?bad noises,? according to chaser Carlo Caya. They thought about following Steve on his final night-time run to the coast, but thought better of it: ?If this things dies out there, it will clog the course,? Caya explained. Carlo is an Expert desert rider from Phoenix who has saddled up with the ?vegpacker.?

On the run from Ojos to Santo Tomas ? south ? the ?00 F550 crew cab dually got sideswiped in the curves near Piedras Gordas and the trucker?s mirror on the driver?s side was slammed back into the side window, busting it out. It was a cold night for the back seat crew. Driver, Chris Bostick, and Scot Bigler, paid the event no never mind.

After Curt and Matt left Ojos to start the second, final, lap, they reported a dying ?blue? fuel pump. Protruck #227 had two pumps, of course, but we scrambled for a replacement ?just in case.? Duralast?s Enduro Racing pits at Trinidad had three ? ?back in Corona.? They ran both pumps all the time with no problems.

And the Enduro guys get the tip of the old Lexan"shield for staying and splashing Race Vehicle Two-Two-Seven, even after the Duralast Ford Trophy-Truck bit the ?polvo.?

Dan Smith had a funny comment regarding Larry Ragland?s being able to beat the Mark Post blockage and gain valuable open running: ?Man! If that happened to me, I?d jam a toothpick in the mike button and whistle all the way to the finish!?

Mark checked the power steering reservoir and tightened a weepy ?B?-nut and sent them on their way, as we hustled back to ?The Rock.? We got a message from Bruce ?BFG Air? Erickson that ?they? had flooded the road above the Power Station. Steve checked it out and determined that flooding on a hill side would actually result in flooding in the valley. We got on the course in the Suburban and drove to the Rock , where only a small bog was found, and we drove through it with grace and ease. A perceived problem requiring no action or concern.

We looked for other possible sources of a Holley fuel pump ? even bugging a sleeping Herzog pit guy, who disavowed any knowledge of source of hard parts. ?We?re just dumping gas. Besides, we?re with Larry (Ragland) and Brian (Stewart)? who did not use the Protruck-mandated type of pump.?

The Long Road Home Steve Barlow and Hos "Red Bull" F-150 took home the big check in the Protruck Class. After 2 laps and a few cans of his sponsors "energy drink", the bullishly blue Ford charged to victory in under 17 hours, at nearly 40 mph.

Barlow came into the BFG ?Rock? as the first Protruck and put in Andrew Wehe for the finish. Wehe is getting a new Jimco ?1? car soon. His Protruck is for sale: ?They are great cars. I just want to ?Overall? the race.?

Word came over the radio that Mike Hardaway ? which includes Joe Hager ? had torn a ball joint off their racer up in the trees and were coming in on a string. Hager out. Estler out. Steinberger ? way back. Hoffman struggling ? he misjudged an uphill near Tres Hermanos and got high-centered. ?We were stuck. It took the crew four hours to come in and get us out of there. My back hurt, bad, from pushing the truck back over early in the race, so I called it quits.? Hoffman?s Chicago-based team then retired to the Ojos camp site for recreational substances and a good line of swapping tall tales.

As the race wore on and temperature dropped, many drivers were donning the orange, heavy-duty, Summit trash bags handed out by Judy Smith at Tech. Scaroni looked particularly festive with his orange and black outfit: one week late for Hallowe?en! He had ?Trick or Treated? the kids at Uruapan whilst pre-running. He and Davie threw handsful of Smarties and Tootsie Rolls and gave out lots of ?steekers.? Walter Prince would be, oh, so, jealous. The kids came up to Contingency and remembered them!

Curt and Matt came down from Mike?s on pretty much schedule and put Scaroni and ?Zonie? in for the run to the roses. Leduc, a glutton for fun, ran off to get into the Darren Skilton ?Isuzu? Class Three.

With Steve Barlow in the lead and The Ricks Johnson in second place, Steve put the pressure on the right pedal and began to reel #243 in. Steve?s crew at Erindera told them that he was behind one of the Ricks by three minutes ? rather than the true eight. He rose to the task, only to clip a sidewall in the trenches and have to stop. (I am glad that that did not happen on my shift: TT does not suffer flats well.) Rick L. said, at the San Nic, that the team knew that Scaroni was gaining and were getting concerned. ?Rick D. got stuck on the ?far side. He got tired and backed into a ditch. No flat, but he got out OK.?

With his flat, the Scaroni gap from second to third went up to just a tick under ten minutes at the end. The race was close. Real close. The top three had no woes, other than a flat each. Parity in the class exists.

Tech pulled a cylinder head off Barlow?s ?Red Bull? truck and it was deemed ?A-OK.? Or so they say.

ASSESSMENT

This Protruck was very plush, with plenty of directional stability. It slides well, under power, while the rev-limited ?crate? motor does not threaten to get any from you. The truck climbs well and traverses ruts, rock ledges and grooves without a complaint. It jumps straight and true, landing without a jolt.

Steve?s truck was also quiet, with few knocks and rattles. Gauge style and placement is second to none ? switchology is a bit removed from the right seat, however. The horn and ?push-to-talk? buttons should be located so that the operator?s elbow is solidly placed.

From watching Scaroni, the truck seems easy to drive, with one hand on the wheel and one on the ratchet shifter, using power to steer. The hood ?balloons? at the rear at race speeds, obscuring some visibility.

Note: There is a street in Heber, CA, named after the Scaroni family.

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