The Ox Motorsports Honda and THR Motorsports Kawasaki teams are ready to throw down in tomorrow’s Baja 1000.
Whatever the outcome of tomorrow’s 48th running of the Bud Light SCORE Baja 1000, it’s a safe bet that the battle for the overall motorcycle win will come down to two teams that are perhaps competing on a more equal footing than in the past 20 years of Baja racing, the Ox Motorsports Honda team and the THR Motorsports/Monster Energy/Precision Concepts Kawasaki team.
Both teams were present and accounted for during today’s pre-race press conference at the Riviera del Pacifico Cultural Center in downtown Ensenada, Mexico, and both know just what is at stake in tomorrow’s grueling race. The Ox Motorsports Honda team is on the cusp of winning its first SCORE World Desert Championship in just its second year of existence, while the THR Kawasaki team still has a shot at retaining that title with a race win and a little bad luck on the part of their rivals.
But the Honda team is hedging its bet by fielding two entries in the Baja 1000, according to Colton Udall, who co-owns the team along with Mark Samuels.
“We’re very excited to be racing this awesome event, and we are fielding two bikes, the 5X and the 3X,” Udall said. “We have three riders on each bike [Samuels is scheduled to do sections of the race on both bikes during the race]. I don’t want to talk about our strategy, but we do have some new sponsors, and Mark can talk about that.”
Samuels said that 2015 has marked a period of huge growth and experience for the Ox Motorsports Honda program, and he is looking forward to the opportunity to net the Honda brand an 18th Baja 1000 win. To that end, the team has forged an unlikely alliance with a company that has been a staple in Baja racing for nearly 40 years, BFGoodrich. While the Ox Motorsports uses Michelin tires, its ability to make a deal with a company that supplies the vast majority of tires to the four-wheeled Baja competitors speaks to its ability to promote itself outside the normal motorcycle sponsorship channels.
“We are using the BFG pits [the company’s extensive string of pit support encampments along the Baja race route],” Samuels said. “They are going to be a big help to us. We have also developed a new light for Baja Designs. We look forward to using both to bring home a win tomorrow.”
The only thing standing in their way of a Baja 1000 victory just happens to be the defending Baja 1000 and SCORE Desert World Champions, the 1X THR Motorsports/Monster Energy/Precision Kawasaki team of Ricky Brabec, Max Eddy Jr., Justin Morgan and David Pearson. While the team has endured a round of bad breaks that will most likely see it lose the World title to the Ox Motorsports Honda team—and THR isn’t out of the running just yet—a repeat win in tomorrow’s race would go a long way toward assuaging the loss of the overall series title. Eddy Jr. says that the team is ready to grab another race win tomorrow and let the rest of the championship chips fall where they may.
“We won the [2015] Baja 500, and we’ve had a little bit of bad luck in the other SCORE races this year, so to come in here and win the Baja 1000 is our whole goal,” Eddy Jr. said. “There is still a possibility that we can retain our 1X plate, but we’re really here to win the Baja 1000.”
According to THR Motorsports team manager Robby Bell, the team has had a good prerun, with nothing really unexpected, considering that the course 821.38-mile course is effectively being in the opposite direction around the Baja Peninsula, but Eddy added that the direction change means that many of the most brutal sections of the course will not be tackled until much later in the event, when riders and teams are more fatigued then they might normally be. That could affect the outcome.
“It is definitely going to be a race of attrition,” Eddy Jr. said. “But we will come out on top. We aren’t worried about those guys [Ox Motorsports] at all. We are just going to do our job, and everything else will just fall into place.”
The motorcycles are scheduled to leave the starting line on the Boulevard Costero in downtown Ensenada at 6 a.m., with the four-wheeled competitors not set to leave until 11 a.m. SCORE estimates that the first motorcycle finisher should cross the finish line back in Ensenada around 17 hours after the start.
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