June 5, 2010 had one of the Closest Baja 500 races Ever!

This year the Baja 500 had a couple of entries in the class 50 motorcycle division that had a fight tooth and nail for almost 500 miles. The Margin of victory for the winning team was a slim 39 seconds!

The two  teams involved were the 500x bike and the 503x. It was Honda vs. KTM from start to finish with neither team willing to give an inch for over 10 hours of racing. In the end it was the Honda team that prevailed across the flag with the 39 seconds they needed to take the checkered flag

Check out the GPS tracking!

From the start it was close as the KTM team started 30 seconds after the Honda and took  the lead about 15 minutes into the race. The Honda team held on and wouldn’t give up, chasing through all the dust and eventually retaking the lead just about the 2 hour mark. By then a couple of rider exchanges had taken place, but each man was unwilling to concede as he took his turn piloting his respective teams bike. These apparently were some tough 50+ year  olds that decided  racing at speeds up to 100 mph in Mexico was more fun than a Saturday BBQ back in the states.

The race looked to settle in after a couple hours of racing as the gap opened a bit for the Honda team to somewhere around 9 minutes. Then the KTM boys made a push and closed up to retake the lead at about 5 ½ hours  into the race. From then on it seemed the RACE WAS ON! 

Each team took a turn taking the lead with the final 250 miles never having them more than a minute apart.  So it went back and forth seemingly taking on a NASCAR feeling with the pit stops sometimes deciding who would come back on the course with the lead.

Now you have to remember in NASCAR you don’t have to ride in the dust of the guy in front of you if your pit guys get you out behind the other rider.  Sometimes the dust is so bad you pray for windy conditions just to clear enough to see the ground you are racing over.

So it went back and forth for the final 5 hours of racing with each team having a minor crash only to recover each time to get back into the mix. Like I said, I don’t know where you could find this many 50+ year old guys willing to fight all day like this. Then assemble them on two teams unwilling to concede defeat until the last seconds run out after 10 ½ hours of racing through mountains, washes, rocks, dust, 100mph fire roads, coastal regions and small towns that turn out spectators by the thousands.

From the 6:30 am start to the checkered flag was almost unbelievable if you consider what had taken place over the course of the day. To have this be decided by 39 seconds is almost the stuff you make into movies. These guys were all certainly worthy of having a part in the movie.

Congratulations guys, all of you on both teams,

Now go home and have a BBQ!

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