kawasaki dirt bike racing

KAWASAKI 4X BAJA TEAM TELLS ALL

(6/6/2013)

Taylor Robert   My first race in Baja was quite the experience. I was fortunate enough to be a part of an amazing team including Robby Bell, Steve Hengeveld, and David Pearson. Coming into the race Steve Hengeveld was nice enough to take me under his wing and show me some of his secrets that he has learned in his 20 years of racing down in Baja. I did a couple days of pre running with him and definitely learned a lot in a short amount of time. After that I did about 5 days of pre running on my own, and by the time the race rolled around I was feeling really good and confident that I could put some time on the other teams in my 75 mile section. Robby was the first bike off the line on race day, which was the last news I heard until right before the bike got to me at mile marker 261. Just before the bike got there we heard that David had a nasty wreck and hurt his back. This meant that Robby would be handing the bike of to me, and riding David's final section just before the finish. We were over 10 minutes down from the Honda team when I got the bike so I knew I had to push hard to make up the lost time. As soon as I hopped on I felt good and I was hitting all of my lines perfectly. I was able to push as hard as I could for my whole section and was having a blast the whole time. It is definitely a cool feeling to be doing 100mph on the dirt. When I handed the bike off to Steve Hengeveld they told me we gained a bunch of time on Honda and we were now about 6 minutes back. There was still 160 miles left in the race so I knew we had plenty of time to make up the rest of the gap. I got in the one of the chase trucks and we were headed up the coast to meet Steve where he was going to get off and Robby would do the last 80 miles. We were about 20 minutes into our chase when we heard from the "Weatherman" that Steve had wrecked and broke his leg. We found out exactly where he was on the course, which was only about 10 miles into his section. I unloaded Steve's practice bike and bee lined it to the beach where he had wrecked. By the time I got there they had already picked Steve up in the helicopter to take him to the hospital. So I jumped on the race bike and finished out Steve's 85 mile section and eventually got the bike to Robby so we could finish the race. We tried to make up as much time as possible but we were only able to make it up to 5th place. Huge props to Robby for racing almost half the race and taking it to the finish for us! Fortunately Steve and David weren't severely injured and they will both be back on the bike in no time. I think we have an awesome team and I can't wait to try and win the Baja 1000 with those guys. Congrats to Honda for taking the win and the KTM teams for getting 2nd and 3rd. It was definitely cool to have a lot of the fastest off-road racers in the United States all racing together.  Now its time to get back to Endurocross as I will be racing in Sacramento this weekend for the AMA Endurocross Series and in I'll be in Munich, Germany for the third round of Global X Games at the end of the month.

David Pearson    I would like to thank everyone that came down to help our efforts in Baja . All of us on the team crashed yesterday except for the rookie on the team Taylor Robert he rode Awsome in his first time in Baja after I crashed Robby had to ride my next two sections . Your the man ! Thanks for picking up my slack . I crashed at the bottom of the summit and injured my back .  Then my other team mate Stev...e had a bad get off and broke his ankle . Dr say that he will have a full recovery best of wishes from the Pearson family to get healed up quick . And I'd like to thank woody a d Cheryl McCord Taylorfor helping support me in Baja you are Awsome ! And thanks nate mydad and brothers and Dallas for coming down and running our pit out on the dry lake bed ..#monster energy , #thrmotorsports , #precisionsuspension ,# fmf, #Ty Renshaw racing, #westerndesigns  Thanks Ty for staying up till midnight every night working on our bikes !!!!!!!