Of the four races in the SCORE World Desert Championship, perhaps none is more dreaded by motorcycle racers than the SCORE San Felipe 250, round one of the SCORE World Desert Championship, due to its seemingly endless miles of Trophy Truck-generated whoops, hidden rocks in sand washes and the fact that more rocks keep coming to the surface with each passing vehicle.
The Gulf of California side of the Baja peninsula doesn’t get the storms that the Pacific coast side does, meaning race courses don’t get Mother Nature’s maintenance, so the San Felipe courses tend to be much rougher and more treacherous for those on two wheels.
That requires a slight change of mindset for most racers, even those who normally tend to be slightly more cautious when racing in Baja, both while pre-running and during the race. But even with a comparatively measured race pace, things tend to happen in Baja that simply don’t happen elsewhere.
First, after officials sent the first three bikes off at 30-second intervals beginning at 6:20 A.M on April 1, from the beachside Malecon in “downtown” San Felipe, Baja California, Mexico, they got a report of a trench in or near the race course so they delayed starting the rest of the field until they could investigate and take necessary action. (This was the first time ever for the race to start and finish there instead of the arches on the outskirts of town. Also, since it’s a timed competition, the delay was accounted for in determining final results.)
Bike number 45X of Francisco Arredondo, Shane Esposito, Justin Morgan and Roberto Villalobos had the benefit of starting first on their Bremen Racing Honda CRF450X followed by Derek Ausserbauer (who was determined to do the entire 272 miles himself on his Poor Boyz Racing CRF450X, though as a Pro Moto Ironman rider in the past this was nothing out of the ordinary) and the Ox Motorsports Honda CRF450X-mounted duo of Ray Dal Soglio and Nic Garvin.
Defending San Felipe 250, Baja 1000 and series champions Ryan Penhall, Mark Samuels and Daymon Stokie were considered favorites but started back in sixth on their Ox Motorsports CRF450X.Still, 100 miles into the race, the 1X machine had only 45X in front of it. Given the delay at the start, though, there appeared to be a lot of ground to make up. Unofficially, 45X enjoyed a 12-minute physical lead at mile 100 with the Fasphalt Husqvarna FE 501 of Schuyler Schoonmaker/Grant Statley/Mark Winkelman third at that point, a minute behind 1X.
But it wasn’t long before the Baja gremlins struck.
First, a bent rotor robbed the 1X bike of its rear brake and after getting the damaged bike from Samuels, Stokie had to ride his entire second section from mile 144 to 190 sans rear brake, obviously not ideal when you’re trying to make up ground on an equally fast rival.
“I sent Stokie to the next pit where [team co-owner and last year’s Rider of Record] Colton [Udall] was and let him swap it out,” Samuels explained. “He did the rear wheel and got us back going. That’s when Penhall got on it. At mile 236, I ran down there just to be backup and Penhall was just under three minutes [physically], right behind them so it was tight! He was making time.”
Unknown to the Ox Motorsports crew, the Bremen Racing 45X bike ran into troubles of its own that proved more costly.
“When Roberto got on the bike at 180, we had 15 minutes [over 1X physically],” Esposito shared. “I literally went two miles [after I got on at 200 and] stopped for a couple minutes. I thought the mousse was coming apart so I checked that and found out it was a axle issue so I rode to where I could find some rocks to prop it up and tried fixing it. There was nothing I could do without more people to help me and I rode from there to 212 and they caught up to us.”
Esposito got the bike fixed and made it to the finish physically first. At that point, the team could only wait and hope they still had enough of a gap to take that treasured victory.
But when Penhall brought the 1X into the finish a few minutes later, the calculators went into overdrive, unofficially determining that Ox Motorsports had
repeated as San Felipe winners by a slim margin.
After official results came out the next morning, everyone learned just how slim that margin was: 1X finished in five hours, 12 minutes and 38 seconds while 45X completed the 272 miles in 5:12:56. In other words, just 18 seconds separated the two teams.
“It’s such a satisfying feeling [to win]; this is such a dangerous race,” Australian Stokie said. “Just the whole pre-running leading up to [the race], I was just happy to get through that, but to take home a [winning] result as well, I’m really stoked for that. I came over and won the 1000 [with Ox Motorsports] last year as well so to top it off with a San Felipe win, unreal.”
Solo rider Ausserbauer finished an impressive third bike overall as well as third Pro Moto Open in 6:03:12 while Pro Moto 40 (for riders 40 years and older) winners Ryan Gustine/Kevin Johnson claimed fourth bike overall in 6:06:45; Schoonmaker/Statley/Winkelman finished fourth Pro Moto Open and fifth bike overall in 6:09:18.
Other class winners included Morgan Crawford/Kevin Murphy/Jim O’Neal in Pro Moto Limited (449cc or less) with their 6:52:43; Dennis Belingheri/Chris Brown/Sal Hernandez/Chad Thornton in Pro Moto 30 (6:27:59); Troy Pearce/Earl Robert/Giovanni Spinali in Pro Moto 50 (7:01:00); Ron Dugan/Robert Koch/Donald Lewis in Pro Moto 60 (8:35:45); Jose Armando Carrasco in Pro Moto Ironman (6:44:29); and Caleb Bertrand/Kevin Gravett/Nick Lanning/Sidney Marchand/Jim Morton in Sportsman Motorcycle (7:22:07).
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