The 2009 Baja 1000 Second Place TAG Engineering Team (1802) Recounts Their Experience

Guest Author | December 4, 2009 | 2 Comments

Thomas Graves at 2009 Baja 1000 Contingency

by Thomas Graves / Sol Martinez

The 2009 Baja 1000 second place TAG Engineering team (1802) recounts their experience. Crossing the Finish Line made Thomas Graves the SCORE Sportsman UTV points champion of the year for 2009.

The race for 1802 started at 12:15pm Friday November 20th. The car was piloted by Thomas Graves with Soledad Martinez as the Navigator. The navigator has a very important role in this race watching the GPS while looking for road markings, course changes and booby traps.

At RM80, they did a driver change to Joe Graves for the Summit and Borrego part of the course. While they were out on the course they ran across a broken trophy truck. Joe could not pass, so assisted the trophy truck by using his Rhino 4WD to tow it off the race course.

Racing the Baja 1000 brings you on and off the road where there are cars and booby traps

At RM201, Tom Graves got back into the Rhino for the west side of San Felipe, Luop and Matomi Wash. At RM 255 they ran into dense cold fog and high center (buried) the Rhino in a nasty siltbed. It took them over one hour and 15 min to dig out and get back on their way.

At RM 305, Joe Graves took the Rhino back for the east side San Felipe Loop, San Matais Wash and Mikes Loop. There was quite a few bottlenecks on the course and helped dig out 4 other vehicles on El Coyote Rancho hill at RM 465 so Joe could get his turn at the nasty hill climb…he lost nearly one hour at this one bottleneck.

As night fell Joe Graves took the drivers seat

At RM 493, Tom Graves took the Rhino back for the final leg of Valle Trinidad, Erendira, Santo Tomas, San Antonio and to the Finish Line. He experienced no real problems during this leg, just tons of silt.

The 1802 team finished in 2nd place in 27 hrs 36 min with an average speed of 24.7 mph.

Over the course of the 672 miles they had 13 planned pit stops for fuel and minor fixes. They changed 5 air filters, and had no tire problems with their Maxxis’ tires. This is all while be challenged with limited communication because the main Radio wire ripped out at RM 80 and they were forced to use the 5 watt portable back up system the rest of the race.

With crossing the Finish Line it made Thomas Graves the SCORE Sportsman UTV points champion of the year for 2009. This is his second SCORE championship ~ he also won the original (First ever) SCORE 2007 Sportsman UTV championship. The championship Trophy will be awarded Dec 5th at SCORE champions Banquet in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Drivers: Thomas Graves, Joe Graves.
Pit Crew: Dan Graves, Soledad Martinez, James Graves, Nonette Brookshire, Fortunata Ferraren.

Photos supplied by Thomas Graves and some by Charlene