Racer’s Brotherhood
Like interests always have a way of bringing people together. When your interests are somewhat extreme, like racing the SCORE Baja 1000, that bond seems to grow even stronger. I have seen many unselfish acts while racing, and it is not uncommon to hear about brothers in (swing) arms putting themselves in harms way to help a racer in need. Whether to save someone’s life or just to salvage their race, there seems to be no limit to the altruistic nature of the brotherhood of racers.
My personal favorite story of unselfishness comes from the 2006 SCORE Baja 1000. After breaking my clutch lever in some particularly nasty whoops outside of San Felipe, I found myself riding a little outside of my comfort zone in order to make up some time. I just got into one of those zones, where it felt like I could do no wrong and I wound up passing quite a few competitors. Feeling quite ambitious, I pulled into the pits around race mile 250 where I was supposed to get lights installed on my Honda Motorcycle for the beginning of the night section. Only one problem…my lights were not there.
My mood went south really quick. I was stuck out there, and couldn’t journey off into the desert night with no lights. The quad team that was pitted next to me was working on a broken swing-arm, and their prognosis looked even worse than mine. They were diligently working on a fix, but they must have overheard my dilemma as I was talking (somewhat heatedly) to my chase team on the satellite phone. Minutes later they stopped what they were doing and inquired about my troubles. I explained to them that the chase team with my lights was out of contact and I wasn’t sure about their status.
Without a word they scrapped their race and began to remove the lights from their quad. Now these are not cheap halogens off your Gremlin we are talking about, but a full set of HID race lights that would run you upwards of $1,500. They didn’t know me from Adam, but both the quad racer and his father were in motion like a NASCAR pit crew trying to get me back into the race without giving it a second thought. To this day I don’t know who those guys were, in the chaos we never even introduced ourselves. I didn’t end up having to take their lights, as mine showed up midway through the installation and I was off, but what a great gesture of sportsmanship and brotherhood in the Baja desert.
This is not an uncommon story, and unfortunately there are a great many more relating to more dire circumstances. Racers always seem to rise to the occasion for whatever reason. Thank you to those selfless quad racers, and to the many racers and organizations that support our sport and motorcycle and quad riders everywhere.
Racer Space is a social network for Powersports racers and enthusiasts. Racers and fans of motocross, dirt track, TT, desert racing and all other racing disciplines gather on Racer Space.
