Trophy trucks aside, they couldn’t have scripted a better swan song, because when the dust had settled and the times were tallied, a couple local riders limped off into the sunset knowing they had made a bit of history by becoming the first Canadian team to not only win the ATV Sportsman class in the Baja 1000, but to finish first overall in the storied series’ overall point standings.
Back home in Oceanside on the heal with a piece of the hardware and bragging rights, are Ken Lehmann and Brad McLean, the driving force behind Nuttbar Racing.
Good friends for years, the 49-year-old two amigos — Brad is the oldest by four days— have been making the trip down to Mexico’s Baja California Peninsula for the three-race series dating back to Nov. 2008, and finish their run having done five races together.
Ken founded Team Nuttbar and blazed the trail with two races in 2007 — the Baja 250 and the Baja 500. It was the third time for both racing in the 1000. They finished fourth last year, and second the year before.
Earlier this year, McLean, known as ‘Insane McLean’ during his days racing stock cars up the road at Saratoga Speedway, announced he wanted the team to take a run at the series’ overall points title for ATVs — an ambitious undertaking that requires not only finishing all three Baja races, but being near the top of the pack in each.
“All three stock car classes I raced in at Saratoga I won the season championship, so when it was decided this was our last year of racing ATVs, we knew we had to take a run at it,” said McLean.
Back in March at the Baja 250 Brad was running a close second, but ran out of gas five miles from the finish line and the team had to settle for third. In June they battled mechanical problems and a big crash for fifth in the Baja 500. On Nov. 20 they capped it off by finishing first out of a field of four ATVs in the granddaddy of them all, the Baja 1000, which ran from Ensenada to La Paz.
This year’s 43rd annual Baja 1000 logged in at 1,061 miles, which Team Nuttbar finished in 29 hours, 17 minutes, with six riders.
Lehmann was in the saddle for the longest portion — 233 miles on the fourth of the six legs —which took about six hours because of some heavy traffic.
McLean tore up the 110 mile home stretch in two hours and 45 minutes.
“When I got on the bike we were about an hour-and-a-half behind the first place rider,” said McLean. “And I thought to myself this is our last chance.
“I rode the hardest I’ve ever ridden in my life,” he chuckled. “Full speed on a course I’ve never been on before (the courses change every year). It was a bit hairy, but by the time I got to the finish line we were half an hour behind.”
Each team had 45 hours to complete the world’s most gruelling desert race, which started out in 24 degrees Celcius and ended in the other side of 30.
When McLean blasted past the checkered flag, he and his Team Nuttbar teammates thought they had finished 32 minutes back of the winner for second (which would not have effected the final points standings), and as such were duly stoked a while later when they were told they’d been awarded first. Seems the other rider had been bumped back to second because of some penalty points he picked up along the way.
That rider was Fernando Amador from Mexico, whose team finished second in the season points championships with 199 points — 68 back of Nuttbar Racing’s total of 267 points, making them the 2010 Score Desert Series series points champions for the Sportsman ATV class.
“That’ll teach ‘em,” Lehmann chuckled, paused, then pointed out, “we would have been in first place if I hadn’t got run over by a trophy truck.”
According to Lehmann, a long-time local landscaper, he was about 60 miles into his night shift when he got bogged down in the middle of a big silt bed — notorious sinkholes which have been the ruin of many a rider.
“I was wrestling it around, trying to free it — it’s like flour almost, you have to get up off the (ground) and kind of wiggle it out of there — and I could see these lights coming up behind, fast,” he recalled, explaining,“he didn’t see me through the dust … I jumped out of the way when the truck came at me and he ran over the front of my quad. No injuries, but the (collision) completely wrecked the front end of my quad.”
The motor and drive train were intact, but Lehmann said it took about 45 minutes, with the help of a motorcycle rider, who also got stuck, to pry and bend and break away the mangled bits around the tires and suspension before he was able to get back on the road (as it were).
Fast forward to the finish line and McLean said he too had a close encounter of the trophy truck kind, explaining how he was sitting on his quad taking to one of the race marshals when one of the big four wheelers came skidding in and hit him from behind.
“It knocked me off (the ATV) … the official caught me before I hit the ground,” said McLean, whose top speed on the three-wheeler that day was a white-knuckle 79 miles an hour.
Nuttbar Racing registers under McLean’s name. Rounding out team Nuttbar at the Baja 1000 were Kyle Walstrom, 17, from Courtney, Jeff Sanca from Vancouver, and a couple amiable American-born Mexicans thrilled to be in the mix and a good choice for the first two legs.
“They didn’t have the finances to pull their own team together, so we brought them on,” said Lehmann.
“Just a great couple of young guys from Yuma, really good kids,” said McLean, adding, “we’ve raced against them in the 250 and the 500, and they were knocked out both times with mechanical problems, so I knew they were good riders, and that if we put good equipment under them they’d do well for us.”
Peter Robinson (aka Peter Works) from Coombs made the trip as well as the team mechanic, “and he did a great job for us — lots of midnight shifts,” said McLean. “We were still turning wrenches on it the night before we left for the race.”
If Lehmann sounded especially grateful for the experience, he said it’s because it nearly didn’t happen.
“We were lucky to make it,” he said, pointing out this year’s record salmon run almost took the wheels out from under them.
McLean runs French Creek Seafood, so was up to his neck in fish around that time, but he reeled it in. Just.
“She was a phenomena,” McLean panned when asked about the unexpected bumper crop of sockeye. “It was freaking insane busy, but I just threw caution to the wind and decided to go at the last minute. I figured we’d come to far to quit now, so we packed up and took off for the race. We got there the day before the start of the race.
“There will always be more sockeye,” he said pragmatically. “But there might not be more Baja.”
Nuttbar Racing will be well be well represented at the Baja awards banquet in Irvine, California, Dec. 11, where McLean and company will be presented trophies for winning the series points title.
Sponsored by Spunky’s Motorcycle Shop as well as French Creek Seafood and Ken’s Orca Landscaping, Team Nuttbar “wouldn’t be possible without the support of our wives who let us spend all the kitchen money to do it.”