What happens when two Internet moguls with no off-road racing experience decide to do one of the most dangerous races in the world? CEO of wellhello.com Tim Whale and Co-Founder of CM Productions Mark Hoashi decided to find out by signing up for the 46th annual Tecate SCORE Baja 500.
Hoashi, who grew up in Southern California, and Whale, who hails from the U.K., met via the Internet more than a decade ago and became fast friends and business partners. For the past two years, the two had mulled over the possibility of attempting to complete the Baja, a rigorous test of driving fitness that regularly kills people each year. Whale has some circuit racing experience, but Hoashi had never competitively driven anything in his life. None of that mattered, as the two adventurous souls agreed to give it a go in this year’s race.
Their attitudes towards the competition could not have been more opposite at the outset of training. Hoashi came in extremely cautious while Whale approached the situation like he was the one who created the Trophy Truck. That quickly changed for Whale, as he realized off-road racing is vastly different from the circuit style he experienced in England.
“I thought I knew something about it,” Whale said. “But when I started doing real research, I realized I knew nothing.”
In preparation for the rigorous race, the two went through intensive training at Driven Experiences in Gateway, Colo. and in Barstow, Calif. with desert racing veterans Chuck Dempsey and Eric Jacobs. “When I was in Colorado, I almost flipped the truck twice,” Hoashi said. “They saw me from that point to pre-running out here, and the coaches tell me I’m 100,000 times better.” Training in a controlled environment is one thing, but reality set in when the crew touched down in Baja a few days before the race for route pre-runs.
The unpredictability and sheer danger of the Baja 500 route is difficult to explain in words. Both spectators and drivers have met their maker during the race and serious injuries happen every year for a variety of reasons. None of that stops drivers from entering their cars, trucks, quads and motorcycles in the race to compete for a little cash and lots of bragging rights. The winner’s takeaway is largely comprised of money taken from registration fees and generally tops out at around $30,000 for the highest class. To put that into perspective, the cost of an average Class 8 truck, the type of truck Hoashi and Whale were running, starts at about $200,000 and can reach up into the millions at the top Trophy Truck level.
The course starts and finishes at Riviera del Pacifico Cultural Center in the coastal city of Ensenada, Mexico, but what happens in between is completely up in the air. It covers desert, highway, mountains and anything else you can think of. Imagine driving from New York to North Carolina without using highway 95 or LA to the Bay Area without any major highways and you have a slight idea of what Baja 500 is like.
Many of the “roads” run through small neighborhoods and farmland, so the people of Baja, who are usually so deep into the action that drivers have to avoid hitting them, are just as much a part of the race as the drivers. It is not uncommon for the locals to steer drivers into manmade obstacles in an attempt to see the vehicles jump.
“What makes this different from any other race is the variables,” says Edge Motorsports Inc. owner Eric Jacobs. “You’re going from hills to forest to beach to soft sand to things you can’t see. There is every kind of weather condition you can think of besides snow. It’s not about how fast you can get to your next check point its if you can survive it.”
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Although Hoashi and Whale are newcomers to the sport, they were able to pull together multiple sponsors, which is uncommon for a rookie truck. During contingency, which is essentially a party where all the participating vehicles are showcased for the crowd, it was clear judging from the amount of sponsor stickers on the Internet duo’s BaDoink truck vs. the other trucks around them that these guys brought in some major paper.
“Coming from the adult industry, it’s very common that, when we sponsor something, we all pitch in,” Hoashi said. “In racing, usually only the best of the best get sponsors. All these other racers are looking at us like, ‘who are these guys with all these sponsors?’ But we’re the most newbie of the newbies out here.”
When Hoashi and Whale decided to do the race, they were under the impression that they would be driving together. That’s not the case, and when they learned they would have to split up drive time, Whale and Hoashi were disappointed that they would have to use co-drivers/navigators. They compromised and agreed that they could traverse the easiest portion of the race as they had originally planned.
The BaDoink truck #869 took the green flag at about 10:30 a.m. as the guys got off to a steady pace during the first three miles together before Hoashi handed over co-driving duties to Dave Tugnet. From there, Whale and Tugnet had a respectable showing, covering the next 78 miles at a good pace. They reached the first check point in 48th place overall and third in class, despite being delayed at mile 64 by a bottleneck caused by a driver who got his truck stuck on a hill.
Unfortunately, Team BaDoink’s luck would take a hit before the designated handoff to Whale and Chuck Dempsey at mile 240 when Whale rolled the truck. Nobody was hurt, but the track bar was bent during the roll.
After a futile attempt to bend it back into shape, the Driven Experiences team embarked on the long drive back to Ensenada to get a replacement bar, but gridlocked traffic prevented the plan from coming to fruition. Meanwhile, Hoashi was at the driver exchange point waiting for Whale. Instead of showing up in the expected three-hour range, Whale showed up after five hours because of the accident.
“In retrospect I think I saw it in Chuck’s face that even if we got the replacement bar, it was over,” Hoashi said. “We kept it optimistic until the last moment.”
Hoashi and Whale’s early exit is somewhat par for the course with Baja. The terrain and the wear and tear on vehicles is extremely rough. Of the 236 vehicles that entered the 2014 race, only 126 crossed the finish line, and of the five trucks in Team Badoink’s class, only two teams finished. The winner of class 8 clocked in at 12:12:00 (avg. speed 37.51 mph). Compare that time with the 2014 course best Trophy Truck (the highest class) winning time of 8:51:50 (avg. speed 50.56 mph).
Ultimately, Whale and Hoashi finishing the race was a long shot. Hell, finishing the race is a long shot for experienced drivers, But, hey, this could just be the beginning. There’s always next year, right?
