Slow Baja - GHA Racing 2021 SCORE International Class 11 Champions

Episode Date: December 10, 2021

Today’s podcast discusses GHA Racing’s Class 11 Championship winning Season. While most racers start racing slower and less expensive vehicles and move up to faster and more costly classes, GHA began in a Spec Trophy Truck and decided to move down to a Class 11 Beetle. Driver and team owner, Alex Gonzales, laughs as he says they have “Racing dyslexia, --but you haven’t lived until you’re flying through the air and you look over, and there is another bug 5 feet from your door flying along with you!” I met the GHA team after their epic 42 hour and 44-minute SCORE Baja 1000 run. They lost their transmission early in the race; and spent two and a half hours replacing it. After spotting the field a 2.5 hour head start they put the pedal to the metal and finished a scant three seconds behind the second-place car. They were filthy and exhausted when I saw them, and as much as I wanted to interview them right there, I let them clean up and get some rest, and we spoke the following day. The GHA team supports The City of Refuge, a private home in Tijuana that houses 16 formerly homeless children. You can read about it and donate through their Miracles per Miles program.  Listen to the podcast on Apple. Listen to the podcast on Spotify. Follow GHA Racing on Instagram Follow GHA Racing on Facebook

Hey, if you've been listening to Slow Baja for a while, you know I love Class 11 racing. Well, today's conversation is with the 2021 Score International Class 11 champions, the GHA racing team. Alex Clyde and Pete sat down with me outside of a pool hotel at the Hacienda Bugumvilius in La Paz, a day after they had completed their 40-hour run of the 1,200-mile Peninsula, Baja 1,000 course, very grueling course. I had just gotten my first night of sleep after basically a five, five hours of sleep over four days covering the event, getting to the event. I had just had a good night sleep and was walking out of the hotel for a very late breakfast

as these guys were rolling in, and they looked thrashed. And I wish I'd put the microphones in their hands right then, but I promised that I'd let them rest, have a cold beer and then I'd catch up with them the next day and that's what we did. The mic levels are all over the place on this one. We were outdoors. There's a lot of atmosphere noise. There's a lot of enthusiasm in the conversation. There's some mic sharing between a couple guys because I was having some technical problems.

But I hope you enjoy the conversation and I will be back with a new show next week. All right. Here we go. Hey, this is Michael Emery. Thanks for tuning into the Slow Baja. This podcast is powered by Tequila Fortale. a handmade in small batches and hands down my favorite tequila. Hey, I want to tell you about your new must-have accessory for your next Baja trip.

Benchmark Maps has released a beautiful, beautiful Baja California Road and Recreation Atlas. It's a 72-page large format book of detailed maps and recreation guides that makes the perfect planning tool for exploring Baja. Pick yours up at Benchmarkmaps.com. It's slow Baja, and I'm at Hacienda, Bugambilius, and La Pais. Haas, Baja, California, Sear, and we are going to sit down and talk about what it's like to run a class 11 on a peninsula, Baja 1,000. So I've got Alex Gonzalez. Clyde, what's your last name? Stiers.

Clyde Stiers, Pete. McLeod. And we're sharing some microphones. There's going to be a lot of background noise, but it's going to be fun. Clyde made some fabulous coffee. I was supposed to give my second cup to somebody else, but I gave it to myself. So thank you, Clyde. And we're just going to get onto it.

So you guys won the championship. Yeah, yeah, we did. So how do you, I mean, let's break down Class 11 racing for folks who know nothing about it. Stock VW, quote on air quotes here, stock VW. So, yes, stock geometry front and rear suspension. I mean, you're using factory VW arms and spindles that the bug came with, whether it's a 60s bug, 68, 69, whatever it is. Stock front arms, stock beam, stock springs, the rear suspension has stock trailing arms.

All that stuff is basically what it came with. And then when you're looking for spare parts for these things, you're looking for good use spare parts. So there's really no way to determine how they've been treated in the past. The metallurgy. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, metal fatigue, you know, you're like, well, this, you know, the way we sourced our parts for our spares was, well, this looks like a bug that hasn't been too abused. Maybe we can use that for our spares.

And then we've got basically the only advantage that it has over a regular bug you'd see driving around on the highway is it has a cage, which adds some rigidity to the vehicle overall. And then we have some shocks that are, I mean, really limited on what shock. we can use. But overall, it's basically a stock VW bug. It has to run a 1600 C.C. Displacement, stock cylinder heads, you know, very restricted. So it's a hot rod 1600 motor. Stock VW transmission. Well, I mean, we can do some modifications to the trans, but not a lot. It has to be a type 1, whatever it came with for the model year. So, yeah. So let's jump into what's it like to drive. drive it. Alex, you're the driver, right? Yes. And you have to have more than one driver for folks who don't know anything about Baja racing. You're not going to iron man a vehicle like yours.

How many hours start to finish? I believe we are 40 hours and 41 minutes to do, uh, 42 hours, I'm sorry, 42 hours and 40 something minutes. Sorry that I'm laughing so soon into the podcast. That's a lot of it. It's a, it's a, you know, it's a, it's a, you know, it's kind of like a blur, but you know, we do split it up. You know, a 200, 300 mile run and a class 11 is, you know, it's a good seven, eight hours, depending. At the last race, I did, you know, like 180 miles and six hours, but it was, you know, it just depends on the terrain and what else is thrown in front of you.

But if you got a clean run, you can do that section fairly quick, but, you know, it is a, it's still a Volkswagen. Class 11, it's not a trophy truck or a class one buggy with a ton of suspension. So it beats you up pretty good. But I think when you're in there and you're doing good and you're first on the road, which thankfully we have been most of the races this year, you know, it gives you a little more drive to, you know, to get to the next pit and hand it off to these guys. So, you know, it's a long way.

I got in at the thousand and went to 200 and then, you know, got to. rest quite a bit. But even though you have those 20-something hours on the highway to get to your next pit, it's hard to sleep. And, you know, on a chase truck is very dangerous down here and, you know, trying to stay up with your drivers and everything. But, yeah, it's a blast. I really enjoy it. Yeah, so let me explain that a little bit. You're jumping out of the vehicle, the race vehicle, and getting into a support vehicle, and then the race vehicle goes on more dirt, squiggly lines, yeah, race course up and down

the, you know, around the peninsula, what have you. And the chase vehicle is going down the highway to the next stop. But you need to eat, you need to, you know, stop. And you're going to need to sleep, but you're trying to sleep in a vehicle doing 60, 70, 80 miles an hour on a sometimes less than thrilling, less than safe road.

So it takes some level of exhaustion to be able to switch off and go to sleep in the pasture seat or the back seat of this truck. Yeah, yeah, we have some, you know, some pretty strict rules on that, you know, as our team goes. You know, we've implemented, we do have some, you know, drivers that they go the long haul, man. They're just beasts behind the wheel, you know, but we always make sure that somebody's up with them in the front seat and then, you know, someone in the back can rest. and if you're you know if you're if you're if you're if you're if you're if there isn't a third person then you know that the guy in the front has to be up with him but yeah it's it's very dangerous these highways are are crazy you're dealing with cows and horses and semis which are like

hot rod semis down here i don't know what they're like unrestricted or something they they're they're doing these mountain roads that you know 100 miles an hour is something it looks like but it's uh you know we see a ton of close calls you have a lot of chase teams that have fallen back, you know, and think they're going to, you know, finish first or something because they're making unsafe passes and just doing crazy things to get down the highway. But, you know, we just take it easy and be safe about it. And, you know, that's our number one goal is to finish, obviously,

but to do it safely and come home after the race. So we have a lot of, we've got a lot of strong rules on safety. What's that line from Nacho Libre? Hey, take it easy, man. Yeah, take it easy. If someone doesn't come home from Mexico, we all lose. Yeah, and it's supposed to be fun at the end of the day, isn't it? Yeah, yeah, no, it's all for the fame and the glory.

And bragging rights, I guess, because the check's not big enough to support even a quarter of this effort. But when you're down here like this, you know, and hanging out with everybody. And at the end of the day, I do it because I love hanging out with all these guys, you know. If I told this guy if they, if he stopped. Point to Clyde. Yeah. If he stopped coming around and all these other guys, I would just sell everything because it's just part of being with your friends and people you love to hang out with and doing it for them, not just yourself. It's a major capital A adventure, isn't it?

Yeah. Yeah, it's huge. It's like you can't explain off-road racing to anybody. It's like people at home, you know, or they're. have no idea that, you know, aren't in the motorsports or racing or cars. And they're like, oh, is it, you go through dirt? Like, you hit rocks. Is it bumpy?

And you're just like, man, I wish I could, like, put you in the car and show you what the hell we go through because it's just stupid. So you've raised some other things off road. Yeah. Yeah. I started in 2006 with a, I mean, we were fortunate enough to start, you know, pretty high up and ended up doing pretty well with it. it was a class one buggy.

Did a couple local races. We tried a Baja 500 and we finished like dead last, you know, with like a minute to spare. You know, so did that and then race that all the way to like 08. Then the market kind of hit everybody and then we, you know, parked it for a good while. And we really didn't do anything. And in 2013 we started, you know, kind of picking back up. We raced Clyde's five car, five Unlimited. in the 2013 Baja 1,000.

And we did pretty well, but we timed out. So that kind of sparked it again, and then we hit a couple code races. And then, you know, from there, we hit a few races in the buggy. And then we saw the Spectrophy trucks coming on board and went to watch a buddy race his. And immediately after that, we sold that and got into a Spec truck. And I think we debuted that in 15. Yeah, in 2015, we kind of got our team back together with Clyde at the helm and immediately had success. We podium the first race at Parker 425.

And I think we got second at the Mint. We got like six or seven at the Mint. We got like six or seventh at the Mint. It was a rough day. The Mint is a really rough course. and then the third race of that season was the Silver State. Yeah, we won that. And he won, and that was just, like, incredible.

That was really, really cool. There's nothing like talking to your driver on the radio and telling the rest of the guys on the team and, you know, all the racing guys out there will know. There's nothing like saying, you're first on the road, copy? Yeah, yeah, when you hear that, you it's it's nice but it's also nerving because I don't want to let all them down and do something

stupid or the car brakes I mean it's inevitable that you know you could have a mechanical failure but if if you're pushing too hard as a driver and something happens you know it's you're kind of letting everyone down but but yeah so we did the spectruck we did good we we got a second in points championship invest in the desert then we entered it in the baha 1000 in 2017 which was the longest peninsula run that we have ever done at that time and we ended up podium third place that race and that was really cool we ended up here at this same hotel at the end of the day and then from there we hit a couple little races we teamed up with some other people and we're driving their truck for a while and then you know just kind of got burnt out i think on

that with life and kids and you know and just other stuff you know going on and but we always all we remain close. And then we took my, I had a class, I've had a class 11, probably for like five or six years now. And the car was just, you know, a street legal, but it was a race car. And I just wanted it just because they're cool. Who the hell doesn't want a class 11 car? And then we met Tim Sletton, you know, and everything kind of fell into place. I was telling them last night. And hang on for a second. We're going to, we're going to, can you just give me 30 seconds on the Sleton family legacy and Volkswagen Motors? Yeah.

No, go ahead. You jump in to us. Just tell the Slow Baja worlds about. You know, there's, you know, I think there's three of them. Dennis is the dad. Tim and Richard are the sons. Tim being the youngest, you know, I've kind of known of them. You know, they're younger than me.

But you hear about them in our valley, you know, the Volkswagen guys, they've been racing class. Everything Volkswagen since, you know, for like 40, 50 years. And I've met Tim a couple times on the job side. because we're a home builder and he's he's done some gates on some certain projects. And one day I have a Porsche 912 and it needed some carburetor love. And so I kind of hit him up on Instagram and said, hey, you want to come look at this car and I need some work on it.

And then he did. And then, you know, then we started looking at the class 11. He's like, oh, yeah, maybe we'll bring it over. We'll get it going. And, you know, we'll see what we got with that. And then it just kind of took off from there. And he invited us to rage at the river. It was a battle at prim.

Yeah, battle at prim. And, you know, our program kind of started there. We blew a motor up in qualifying. We had like a stock. Come to find out, the motor was like stalking it. It was just, you know, half the horsepower that it should have been. And I think we qualified like eighth or seventh still. And then it seized up, you know, so we didn't get to run that race.

Then we took it to King of the Hammers. and I entered it in the short course race and hung with some of the people in back with the stock motor, you know, and bang some doors, and then we were kind of hooked, you know, and all right, I'm like, all right, well, I need that sledding motor. But, yeah, to go back on that,

Tim had, I think he's been on his own now. He ended up starting sledding engineering, so he's doing race engines and prep. And Pete, Oh, shit. Sorry about that. We got a coffee down. There's a coffee down.

Coffee down. Coffee down, copy that. Hey, Clyde, why don't you jump in here and talk about, again, starting sort of at the top of this crazy off-road racing stuff, that you're in spec trophy truck. So that, for my understanding, from my understanding, from my understanding, trophy truck with a con-old. common motor. Yeah. So you've got the trophy truck, but everybody's got the same sort of motor. So it's supposed to be more competitive and less expensive. But it's high six figure racing, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I hate to like peel that. Yeah, nobody wants to talk about that. Yeah, nobody wants to talk about that dollar. But it's it's not seven figure racing, but it's damned expensive. Yeah. It is one of the most competitive classes out there. So it is basically a trophy truck. It's an unlimited vehicle. Obviously, you have, you know, you have to run a three-speed turbo transmission with a turbo 400 transmission, but it's unlimited, basically, except for the engine, you know.

So we're running 39 inches of tires, 39-inch tires, 40 inches of wheel travel in the back, all these types of things. And so that was fun. I mean, that was really exciting to be a part of that program. You know, it's a real honor that Alex, you know, invited me to participate and kind of, run the program. It was a challenge and it was a big commitment from all of us. And, you know, Alex has been good about making the commitment as a team owner and saying, you know, and I'm a frugal guy myself, you know, I just, I just watch what I spend. You know, I try to pay attention to what's going on and, you know, I'm frugal. And I think Alex knows that about me. So we would

get by on what we could and he knew that when I was, hey, we need this, we need that. If Clyde says we need it, then we actually really need it. You know, it wasn't into getting fluff and fancy stuff or whatever. We'd get what we needed. And so as far as spec truck racing goes, we kind of did it on as much of a budget as you possibly could compared to a lot of the other teams. So, and I've been around Volkswagen, literally since I was born with my, with my family. And then, you know, my uncle was trikes by stires, you know, so I did all that.

stuff and then you know I've just loved Volkswagen's forever king of the hammers comes around we race the spec truck which is fun it was a you know we did that and then Alex ran the bug and you know his co-driver at the time Dave Jameson told me he says uh you haven't lived until you're six feet in the air in a class 11 and you look over and there's another one in the air next to you he's like dude I'll never forget that that's a good visual yeah and that just went that was it And Alex was like, oh, dude, we're going to do this. We're going to do this. And so now you've got a team of a spectruck team that has been successful, you know, at season championships, you know, second place.

A lot of wins under our belt. You know, we won Parker 425 and 16, 11th overall. The whole race. The whole, you know, stuff like that. We won that race. And, you know, getting down here in Baja on that. And then so you take our team with our. desire, our, you know, drive to win.

Our drive to win, yeah, our competitiveness. And the knowledge of everybody. And then say, all right, let's race the bugs. Now you've got guys like me who can put it together, the program. You've got guys like Tim. And you've got guys like Pete who like, this guy was like almost in tears because we weren't going to get a first place. And I'm like, dude, we're trying, you know, if you can finish. a peninsula run in a class 11, you won.

Yeah. You know, you won. It's really, really challenging. It's a bucket list thing for so many people. And so we came down, this is our first season racing class 11. We went to the San Felipe 250. We had a DNF. It was tough.

That was a really, really tough pill to swallow. And I think as a team, we were kind of like, man, this is really hard. I mean, what's going on here? I mean, this must be harder than we thought it was. And I know that a lot of the other Class 11 guys were thinking, oh, look at this truck team thinks they can come down and race the bugs. Like, it's no big deal. And on top of that, we had a really bad showing at King of the Hammers right out of the gates.

So I know there was some talk, you know, oh, look what he did. And then it turns out it's a stock motor, no prep. There was no prep on the car. You know, we just, we weren't ready. So then we came to the Baja 500. I think we, as a team, we were like, what the hell, you know, like, this is not. We know what we're doing. We know what we're doing.

Yeah. You know, and then we just like, all right, we got to really buckle down and get our shit together. And, like, we made just a couple adjustments. You know, you know, with that, with that, you know, about that, we have, Tim was all fired up, you know, and I think that, you know, he's the guy. And there was a, we had that DNF. There was a few parts we were missing and this and that. And, you know, I have, I'm kind of a hard ass.

Well, not kind of. I'm a hard ass. So these guys are all not. their heads, yes, by the way. So I told Tim, look, dude, we're either going to freaking do this or we're not. So if you want to do it, let's do it. If we're not going to go like 110%, I don't want to sign, I don't want my name, I don't want to do it. He got that. And he, he learned a lot at San Felipe. Sometimes you got to get your ass whoop to learn something. And so we came to the 500 ready to rock and roll. I mean, it was a completely different

motivation. The team was like fired up when we were like, do whatever it takes. We just So 500 comes around. We finished the race with one minute and one second to spare. We were the first team to finish the Baja 500 in three years. That's how tough it is in that class. So for the folks who don't understand, there is a time limit that you can start and finish. And when people say they timed out, that meant that the... The clock expired.

The clock expired. That's an indication of how difficult this is. So what's the clock for a 1,000 Peninsula run, which is really what, 1,200 something? 50 hours. 50 hours to go 1,200 miles. So, yeah, so I think that you must average about 25 miles an hour right in there, 25 and change. All right. So you have to.

So the 500 you get in, a minute to spare. Take it from there. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I did the last section from, like, Vicente Guerrero up to Urupan, and it was so difficult. I mean, we had fog, we had dust, these hills that, it was just insane. And my co-driver, I mean, we made it. I couldn't believe it. And it's like I kept going, what time is it?

I kept asking him at some, what time is it? What time is it? Because I had an idea what time we needed to finish. Then I just stopped asking him because I said, you know what, I'm not even going to ask. I can, I'm going as fast as I possibly can. That's all I can do. You're going to make it or you're not? Yeah, exactly.

And, I mean, it was so bad that at one, several, points along the way. I literally thought the shocks had fallen off the front of the car. I was like, this is so freaking rough, dude. Like, what the hell is going on? I go, I think the shocks came off, bro. I think they got broke. It was just brutal. And these guys have a tendency to hand me, the old timer, the freaking car at the end of the race, like, oh, Clyde will get it done. He'll get it there. He can work on the car. He'll get it there. He's level-headed. But they hand me a crap car. It's got no It's clapped out. Oh, it's clapped out, dude.

The shocks are junk. There's no brakes. You know, it's got all these, you know. So, but I guess they know I'm used to driving piles of junk. So, like, oh, well, this is normal for him. I don't know what they say. But it's pretty cool because they have faith in me to get it that last little bit. It's like the closing scene of the movie, Lamont.

Yeah. Are you fit? Yeah. I want Porsche to win Lamont. Yeah. So that's it. Are you fit, Clyde? Are you fit?

Yeah. So our season there starts with. It starts with the DNF right out of the gates, and then it starts with a win. And that was, like, incredible. People loved it. You know, it was pretty phenomenal. I mean, that was one of my greatest racing memories, and it will be forever. I mean, it was just, I was like a little baby at the finish, dude.

I mean, I was emotionally and physically just destroyed after nine hours in the car. And with one, it was, it was incredible. I'm just, I'm kind of rethinking about those memories at the finish line right now. Clyde's willing up behind his dark glasses. So with that one minute to spare, too, it's like, you know, we had, do you think of all the little issues we had, you know, throughout the race? And like if, you know. 10 seconds here, 10 seconds there.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, literally seconds. You know, literally. Like if, you know, we had a, we had to fix the lights when Tim and, when Tim and Pete were in the car. Yeah, they were driving on the lights. I had to take off a fender because it was rubbing on the tire, you know, like, if I would have just took two seconds there.

more, you know, and then when we got stuck, if Junior wasn't running up a hill to go find somebody, you know, if he was walking or something, there was five seconds there. And all that adds up. And it could have resulted into a DNF, but I don't know. Someone was watching over us up there and, you know, it just fell into place. But that is crazy, you know, to think it was literally a minute that could have easily inspired. Yeah, we had, I mean, the headlights. The lights went out on the car. So Alex was like, you guys got to go. I wasn't there.

He literally handed them a flashlight to Pete here, who's a co-driver in the car, handed Pete a flashlight and said, pointed out the window. You guys got to go. Right? So all this stuff adds up. And then there was one point in the race in Urapan to where I tried to go up this hill. It had giant ruts. It was like, and I backed down it.

I thought I was going to crash backing down the hill. I gave another shot at. I said, okay, I got to go this way instead. You know, I tried to do it again. But the ruts are so big, and you have a stock VW bug that it, basically what you do, and the guys know this, you just point and pray. You point it up the hill, and you go for it. And no matter which way you turn the car, it's going to go where it's going to go. If it lands in, I mean, it's just is what it is.

So I tried it again, and I stopped in the exact same spot. And I was like, oh, my gosh, this is it. Now, this is about 6 o'clock in the morning. There are no fans around. Everybody's going to help you. We're in the middle of nowhere. You're on your own. We're on our own.

I get out of the car and I said to myself, this is it. This is where we DNF our Baja 500. And this is why it is so hard. That's it. Unfortunately, this is it. And you find some strength? No. Well, I found strong.

strength through God, right? So I sat there and I prayed to God. I said, so we have an orphanage in Tijuana, and the orphanage comes to with us to all the races. We put them up and they, they just, we love having them around. It's just a big party, right? We take all these kids that are from the streets of T.J. And they're adopted mom and dad and, you know, they just party with us, you know. And so I'm sitting there and I just, I prayed to God. I said, hey, I don't know, man. I'm, I know that I cannot do this without your help. I'm so jammed up right now. It's just me and Nelson.

Like, we're done. I don't know what else to do. I have no one else. Help me. And I turn around, I just closed, and I turned around, and about a quarter mile away on the hill, three guys walk over a hill in the middle of nowhere.

And I'm like, waving, bearing gifts. Waving, motioning to them, like, come here, come here, come here. So they immediately start running down this hill. Now, myself, I can tell you that if I would have been those guys, I would have walked to you. I wouldn't have ran. I would have said, don't tell me to run, dude.

I'll just be grateful that I'm walking. I'm not going to run. So they start shuffling down this hill, almost falling into the rocks and everything. They come over and they push us up the hill and we make it. Right? There's three of them and Nelson's out pushing and we made it. But bear in mind, if they didn't run. One minute, right?

We wouldn't have made it. Right. Yeah, so the whole thing is just incredible. So we get that done. Everyone's like, oh, they're lucky. They got lucky. Oh, da, da, da, da, no. All right.

So then we come back at the Baja 400. Again, Alex starts out the race. Now you've got a guy that's used to seeing terrain and things come at him at 110 miles an hour. Now you put him in slow motion at 25 miles an hour. And he's just like threading the needle. He puts on like a two-hour gap on the field by like race mile 150. So then the nice thing about that is we put our ringer in in the beginning of the race. So then he gives us other guys a good cushion.

We get in, hey, no pressure. Take your time. We've got a gap on these guys. At this point, now you're just racing Baja itself to get the finish. So then we put it on the clinic at the 400. No issues. We come to the five. Now we come to the Baja 1,000.

And it's a peninsula run. So instead of just racing, you know, four or five or, you know, I think we had seven at the Baja 500 and only three entries at the 400. Now you're racing 12 of the best class 11 racers around. And that was pretty exciting because, I mean, Alex is not in his head because he loves competition. I don't want to be the guy to race against like nobody. You know, I think that's that's kind of lame, you know. And at the end of the day, you're racing Baja. It's kind of like the other teams don't matter, you know.

not that they can't, you know, make it or anything. I'm just saying you're, you're just racing Baja because that's, that's your hardest competitor, right? But to come to a field of 12 other guys and plus us, that's cool. Then you start hearing, you know, oh, you got this guy, you know, from La Paz, and you got, you know, this team and that team. And, oh, they hired this guy to drive that. And I'm like, I'm like, okay, well, you know.

Yeah, we're not scared. Yeah, that doesn't really bother me, you know. That's, that's like, let's like, let's go. I said, we are, you know, we're that guy, you know. They're probably saying the same thing. But, no, it's great to have that competition and, you know, and to do well and beat that many people is good, you know. So, because we're used to, in the States, you know, we have much higher car count,

especially in like spec truck. You know, we were racing 20, 25 people at a time. 30 sometimes. Yeah, sometimes 30 and, you know, beating them. But yeah. Haiti, wish you had joined us on the Nora 500. Well, here is your chance. It's double the mileage, double the fun, double the parties, double the dirt. It is the Nora Mexican 1000. We're going to drive by day. We're going to party by night. I'm pouring Fortaleza tequila. April 30th through May 6th, 2022. We're driving the entire peninsula. You don't want to miss out on this one. Again, if I can do it in my 1971 Toyota Land Cruiser, totally stock. You're driving. You're driving the entire peninsula. You don't want to miss out on this one. Again, if I can do it in my 1971 Toyota Land Cruiser, totally stocked. You can do it in any modern 4x4. The Nora Mexican 1000 is the happiest race on Earth.

Check it out at nora.com, n-r-r-r-a-com, or on Slow Baja. Here at Slow Baja, we can't wait to drive our old land cruiser south of the border. When we go, we'll be going with Baja Bound Insurance. The website's fast and easy to use. Check them out at Bajabound.com. That's Baja Bound.com, serving Mexico travelers since 1994. Well, let's bring Cowboy Pete into this conversation. Pete looks like he's normally barrel racing or rope and steers or whatever.

How did you ride boys? Yeah, you could ask this guy what he's done in the last three months, and you'd be amazed. He's got a ball cap on this as the crooked hooker ranch. Shout out Justin Pierce. So tell us about your involvement. How did you get down here and doing what do you do normally and how'd you get into this? And what's your take on Baja? So I do a lot of different stuff.

right now I'm a VW mechanic and I help prep off-road race cars with Tim Sletton this is my first year with these guys and it's been one of the craziest years of my life. It's been really good, a lot of fun. Alex brought Tim in

to do some driving after they had built a car and prepped together and whatnot on Alex's car at King of the Hammers and I had been running with Tim Sletton for a while. I've known them my whole life I'm real good friends with these guys and I never quite work out when I was younger. I grew up in Wyoming. My parents were in the military, so now that I'm

full-time in California, I started spending a lot of time around the V-W thing. My family's been in it in it a long time. My grandpa and my uncle have been big-time Volkswagen guys. They raced in the 80s in Volkswagen's and shout out Manfred at Opa. And those guys, you know, helped the Sletons a lot. And Dennis, Tim and Richard's dad. Legendary figure. He's basically the bill. strop of Volkswagen. He's the dude. Yeah, they've been around running with my family way back in the 80s and 90s and stuff and ran an auto body shop together and stuff. So, you know, there's a lot of history there. So it was cool for me to jump in, kind of all in for the first time in my life

and take it seriously. And I've been running with Tim, building a lot of stuff, doing a lot of cool stuff. And we got, you know, the opportunity to come over here and race with Alex in this score season. And it's been one insane adventure. So let me stop you right there, Pete. as the new guy, as the Wyoming dude on this team. I often want to explain Baja to people, or people ask me to explain Baja to them. And there's a lot of dirt in California. There's a lot of dirt in southern United States.

How is the dirt here different? How is the racing here different? And how are the people here different? So Baja is legitimately, like, my version of the Wild West. I didn't know what, you know, Baja would be like. You'd just hear about it, you know, and you get down here, and it's just this insanely beautiful, crazy place. The rules are all different.

You know, you don't really have to stop at a stop sign if you don't want to. The desert is really harsh, to be honest. So Baja says stop at the stop signs. Yeah, yeah. It's like a recommendation the cab drover told me last night. But it's definitely different than the states. It's the desert. It's gnarly.

There's just, I don't know, the course these guys set up is crazy sometimes, and you go through terrain that you think would be similar to the states, but it's not really. It's, I don't know, it's a different kind of desert, but it's really cool. It's beautiful. I don't get to see it too often because we usually race in the dark, but it's nice in the daytime. Yeah, we're the night riders.

But it's fun. Baja's really cool. It's really crazy. The people down here are beautiful. They're super awesome. Everybody, all the race fans, it's crazy different from the states because you race in the states and you're not even allowed to be anywhere near the course. There's no spectating like that.

You'd be lucky if you can sit in some grandstands and see them for 20, 30 seconds. You get down here and, you know, there's people in the middle of the course. You're dodging animals. Like, you just don't see that stuff in the States. We came up a hill in the 400, I think it was, and there was 30 cows. in the middle of the road. Like, we're honking at these cows trying to get them off the road so we can keep going. And it was just, it's nutty down here.

But it's, that's the, it's crazy fun. There's nothing. I've never been a part of anything like this. It's wild. And Pete, give me 30 seconds on what it's, what the job of a co-driver is. Yeah, so a co-driver's job is to be the ultimate hype man. You're doing great, buddy? Yeah, yeah.

So, it's going great. You want to know about the car. Really, I'm a navigator is, I guess, what it comes down to. I've got a job. GPS system in front of me that has the race course downloaded into it. And I need to make sure that our driver can go as fast as he possibly can, which means that I need to be letting him know what's around the next turn, you know, five to six seconds before we get to it so that he can set himself up for to run as fast as we possibly can. So I'm navigating and giving him notes and then, you know,

when things happen, I'm usually the one who would ideally get out of the car to fix it. Like flat tires, I'm jumping out. I'm pulling the spare tire out from under the hood. I'm jacking the car up, changing it. I'm in usually the radio communications guy. I'm, you know, trying to communicate. We wanted the driver to just drive, basically. So I'm trying to take all the other factors out of play.

You know, if things are going on at the pit, I'm the one who's going to relay to them about that, let them know we're coming in with these issues. And all the information gleaned about what's coming ahead comes from pre-running. Correct. So that's your own efforts to pre-drive the course as soon as the course is released and make notes about what's what. Here you're going this fast. Here you can go that fast.

Watch out for this. And then there's all the other stuff that happens. Yeah. So we actually came down, me, Clyde, and a couple other guys two, three weeks ago, at least for the thousand. We pre-ran, what, 520 miles or so? Yeah, we ran from 200 to 700. And yeah, we got a lot of notes. So we just go through and pre-mark on our GPS system.

So when we're racing, I can go back. And I'm seeing all these little dots on the map. And it's got a note next to each one. So I'll know, you know, there's a big checkup here. We need to slow the car down. Or if we stuff in that checkup without that note, it could end our race. You know, we'll fold the front beam or fold the frame. So you just, you know, it's pre-running is crucial for sure.

Hey, let's go around. Except for guys like Alex, sorry. He doesn't need it. He's a C-N-Drive guy. Hey, let's go. around and wrap it up. So Pete, thank you. Clyde. Again, give me your takeaway from everywhere you started, you know, spec trophy truck to class 11. What's the mentality to say like, yeah, we're doing it. It's absolutely as hard or maybe harder than any other class in this thing.

And you have that normally people I would think, my ignorance, I would think people would say, oh, I'm going to start in a class 11 because it's less expensive. It's, slower and I'm going to work my way up. You guys went the opposite way. Off-road dyslexia is what I call. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I don't know. I'd call it.

There's a lot of things I could call it, but none of them are very, uh, flattering. Insanity would be, you know, that's probably one of the, yeah, yeah. Um, but, um, I mean, we race the spec truck. We had one belt come off the whole way. I mean, we had a couple flats. It was a super clean run. done, no issues. We even talked about it. Alex was like, that was kind of like boring. It wasn't even that exciting. We drove down, we did the race, and we went home, which was great.

I mean, that's what you want. But man, running this class 11 car, at every race, it's an adventure, you know, because these things come in after 150 miles on the course. They're going to need some love in one way or another, you know, and you've got to shake the whole car out, you know. You're looking at it. Oh, change the air filter, do this. I mean, we blew a transmission up at Race Mile 200 at this Baja 1,000. So a lot of guys, I think, like a lot of our competition was like excited about that. And I don't blame them because I would be too. You guys are done.

Yeah, we're out, you know, or whatever. And I'm going to tell you they should. They should never catch you out. That was very gracious of them. I mean, gracious of us to hand that gift over because we had, we were down for two and a half hours. at race mile 200 by changing the transmission in a gas station parking lot and by race mile 6 820 we were first on the road so if we wouldn't have had to change that transmission which is no fault of anyone's

it happens Alex don't ever put the freaking car in reverse again not that I had anything to do with it I mean but just no it's I mean it all stems from that you know and all I'll take accountability for that. So we put that in. We had two and a half hours of downtime. You could see the whole video of changing it on our Instagram. It's GHA Racing on Instagram.

The whole thing was live. And we came back from two and a half hours of downtime. And at Race Mile 820, we're first on the road. So there's some skills involved there because Tim and Pete were in it from 200 to 400. I got in it from 400 to 600. know the ish everything and then armando ventura and edgar were in it from there to 900 and you know Alex Tim got back in Tim and Pete Tim and Pete got back in when we're battling with the uh for number for first place and then we had some electrical issues that that you know what ended up taking us out

from the win at the end of the day it's so funny because we come down you're like okay we got a spare trans we got spare arms we got all these different spares do you know what took us out from the from you know what took the win away from us at the end of the day I'm on the edge of my seat. The radio fell out of the car. It busted the whole front tin in the parcel tray in the front of the car. It ripped out and it took some of the wiring harness with it. How do you prepare for that?

We even welded a metal reinforced bar to support the radio. Right. And it broke. And that was it. So we were able to cobble it back in, you know, hobble it back into the pit. Pete and Tim called on the sat phone, hey, what, you know, so they got it back in. We rigged it together real quick. And then, you know, me and Alex had, we had the same conversation at the Baja 1000 in 2017 in the same area.

Okay, what do you do at this point? Are you going to run this guy down in first place and throw the car away and possibly even end up with the DNF? Or are we going to go in and cruise into a finish? and maybe those guys will something will happen to them, you know, because we were still 200 miles from the finish. And so, but anyways, you know, running out time. But yeah, it was, it was freaking awesome, dude. I mean, I'm on, I feel like I'm on top of the world, dude.

I mean, this was just, I mean, I can't thank you enough, Alex, for having me be a part of the team, you know, and Monica, she supports me and all this kind of crazy stuff, you know, and it's super nice meeting you. I mean, it's just Baja. It's just incredible, dude. I mean, it's just the best. Alex take us home. Yeah, no, like what Clyde said, you know, at that point, just to finish off the race,

you know, it's, we're in a little bit of a different position because we're racing against one other car in our class that could have won the championship. So there was a couple different multiples, yeah, variables on, you know, if he finished and we didn't, he would win. If we both finished, we win, you know, so there was all kinds of. of variables there. And then, you know, I want to go for the win, but at the same time, you know, I just, I didn't really know what I was going to do once I got back in. I knew that the lead car was 20 miles away, which is not a ton. But, you know, 20 over 200. Yeah, yeah. I mean,

it's doable. We've already came back. Two and a half hours. Yeah, two and a half hours from the back. So I just got in and we just ran a decent pace. You know, we, again, we had no radio communication. I didn't know where we were, but I knew that I could see him on any corner. You know, he could have got a flat or blah, blah, blah, or whatever. But we just took it in, you know, at a decent pace. At that point, you know, long. That was a lot of hours in a couple days, and I just wanted to get it there. And I knew if we got it there, we'd be on the podium or we'd win.

So, you know, it was a tough section, a lot of silt. The fog was hanging, you know, and then we got in about 25 miles, you know, to the finish. The car cuts out. You know, I'm like, what the hell? So we're... And we were in second at that way. Yeah, we were in second at that point. And, you know, I'm checking stuff.

Come to find out the car ran out of fuel. We miscalculated, you know, all the silt and the sand. I mean, we didn't know what was on the course at that time because we didn't pre-run that far down. So again, that goes back to being prepared and making the effort to pre-run. But it is what it is. So we called in on the sat phone for fuel. One of our guys drove down to an access road. And Mr. Pete here, we saw him running with a five-gallon can fool jamming down the course.

He runs like a half mile down the course. We dump three gallons in it. Dump three gallons in it. High school sprinter. At that point, I was like piss. You know, I was like, this is BS, man. Well, because did you tell him the other car, the second, so we were running second and then the third place. Yeah, second place ended up passing us and that sparked me.

I don't like being passed. And I knew he was in second at that point. You know, and they were moving pretty good. You know, they weren't lighting the world on fire. And so that was about 15 minutes come by, Pete sprouting up and we dumped three gallons in it. We strap up and just go. I knew that we had 20 miles, so I just kind of was driving a little stupid. And I got to throw a quick side note into, you know, anybody who's wondering,

the only way you can pass the GHA truck or Class 11 car is if it's parked on the side of the road. Other than that, you're not getting around. And if anybody who says they have, I'd like to hear a story about it. Because unless we're broke or the car's limping in, you're not going to pass it on the road when it's running good. Yeah, so the last 20 miles coming into La Paz is brutal. like huge whoops sandy there you got the stairs that they call them there's like eight giant stairs you know i did that in my truck and it was rough the car like every step i thought the front end was in a break off the back end was going to break off the front end i'm like and juniors like what the hell

is this guy doing like second gear was going so i was just wrapping it out in first and then uh you know we finally made it in i saw these my team at the same exact corner that i saw them when we did it in the spec truck and we were running in almost the same position you know throw it into first wrap it out hauling ass down the highway like a quarter mile past we start running out of fuel again so it's like cutting out and I could see this guy that we had caught you know he was probably driving like a normal person just trying to get to the finish to where I was just being a total asshole just I thought it was going to break but I didn't really care and you're driving through traffic at this stage uh yeah there was a bunch of People cheering us on.

It's just, you know how rough it is coming into La Paz. And then I see his lights right on the highway. So he was like maybe a quarter mile. So we put a huge gap on him, you know. And he was probably like, oh, this guy's broke. I'm just going to limp it in. But we had different plans. Get it on the highway.

We start running out of fuel again. We're like three quarters of a mile from the finish. It dies rolling at 60. And I drop it in a second and pop the clutch. And it starts back up. And we're reeling this guy in. I see him turn into the finish line. It dies again.

Then I pop it into first and drop the clutch and it starts again. And at that point where, yeah, the tranny's probably smoked. Yeah. And then we reel him in at the last second. I finish right behind him. And he got the, he got across the line before me. But I snuck right in front of him. And there's probably a video of it.

I know he was pissed about that. Yeah. We're racing to the end, man. No, that's fine. And that's really it. That's really it. Yeah, we're racing to the very last second. He might think I'm a hole, but.

you know, it's just, it is what it is. So we're third physically. He was in front of us, Poyo racing. You know, shout out to them. They ran a good race. Yeah, they went over the tractor trail. Yeah, they went over the tractor trail, so they're the real winners. But, yeah, we came in, and, you know, at that point, I knew we locked in the championship.

What's the end goal? You know, everyone wants to win, but we got the season championship, which was amazing. Well, congratulations. I want to say thanks for making some time for slow Baja today. Yeah, thank you and great meeting you, man. I wanted to catch you guys when you had that distant stare in your eyes yesterday, but you looked a little thrash. I'm glad we made some time today.

And I think this is as fast, slow Baja as it gets. Yeah. I mean, it's slow, but it's got to feel very fast and super stressful. So congratulations on the championship and all the planning and heartache and sweat and everything that went into it. and I hope you get to enjoy yourself a little bit on the way back north. Yeah, thank you. And everyone have a safe drive home. And we'll see you guys next year.

I think we're going to, we'll see what we do. So, Alex, just tell us one more time on the, where people can follow you. Okay, yeah. So it's at G-H-A Racing on Instagram and Facebook. Other than that, I'd like to shout out one little. Please shout. So we, I mean, like Clyde said, you know, we support a family in Tijuana. It's called City of Refuge, and, you know, they became more family than friends, you know.

There's 18 kids. They're taken care of by a mom and a dad adopted, obviously, but these kids have all came off the streets of Tijuana. You know, they're walking around at two years old with nobody, and these people brought them in. And now they have 18 kids. You know, they've been with us every race so far, and they're like our good luck charms. You know, we put them up, and they're... They're camping, you know, intense and stuff, but it's, that's like a huge vacation to them. So incredible family, but we put together this miracles per mile campaign.

And, you know, for this race especially, Monica and Clyde already do a ton for them. And so people were donating per mile that we would make it in the race, you know, and they could pick a cent if they want or a dollar per mile. They could do a straight donation. So that was another thing in our head, you know, just trying to finish for them. And so I think we ended up raising about $8,000 for them for the family, which is huge. I will tell you that, you know, we went into this race thinking, you know, hey, we would like to get a championship. We'd like to get a win. But at the same token, you know, more importantly, every mile that we clicked off was going to make a difference in their life.

You know, so the thing is still up. It's www. Miraclespermile.com. you know, it's open, you know. Man, that was a lot of pressure for me. Yeah. Because I was like, man, and dude, I'm going to get choked up. You know, these guys know what I was I am.

But I'm hard on the outside, soft on the inside, you know, I'm basically an egg. Egg head. No, but yeah, so that was the, I think the biggest task at hand is to finish for them. But everything else on top of it is icing on the cake. Yeah, I always say, you know, running these cars and all that stuff, you know, like people are like, oh, you guys are Baja Warriors, you know, you race class 11. It must be so hard and this and that. They're raising, they're raising 18 kids every day with only donations, only through the grace of God, only from what people will do. And they get it done every day.

You know, we come down here and race for a week and we think we're like, oh my gosh, how did we do this? We're maniacs, you know? It's like, no, dude, they are amazing people. Obed and Evelyn, you know, it's so. So yeah, anything anybody can do to help them out, you know, that'd be great. And there's a link from the Instagram site. Yeah, yeah, it's on my bio. They can click there.

Yeah, we're going to try to keep doing it, you know, as time goes on and stuff. So, again, thank you for having us on. Thank you to my team, everybody, everyone in Baja. And, yeah, we'll see what we got going next year. Check them out. You can find the links on the show notes. And we'll be back soon with the new show next week. So guys, that was really fun.

Thank you. Thanks. Cheers. All right, we did it. Have I told you about my friend True Miller? You've probably heard the podcast, but let me tell you, her vineyard, Adobe Guadalupe winery is spectacular. From the breakfast at her communal table, bookend into an intimate dinner at night.

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