Margin of Victory

In autocrossing, victory often comes down to thousands of a second. An entire class can be with the same tenth. Even from SS to HS, the spread is no more than a few seconds. In Baja, things are a bit different.

The winning Ford Trophy truck came in at 17:12:57.480. The stock Raptor that Ford entered came in at 35:59:08.151. That's 18 hours behind. The winning truck could have run the course twice, and still beat it. No knock against the Raptor, but that's one of the biggest spreads in motor racing that I can think of!

That is a pretty wide margin... how wide was the margin between the trophy truck and the top finishing VW Bug?

You have 36 hours total, anything over that and you officially don't finish. The stock Raptor was the absolute last car to finish, beaten by UTVs, VWs and lots of other things. However, the Raptor was almost stock, even wore a license plate and was driven back to Arizona after the race. Considering the 128 vehicles that didn't finish at all, that's pretty impressive.

The nature of the Baja course is such that slow cars don't impede the fast ones. In a circuit race, you usually have to qualify at a certain percentage of the pole time simply to avoid being a hazard to navigation. You don't end up with some vehicles traveling at half the speed of others. They're weeded out before the race even starts.

Many times the Class 11 Bugs (stock) don't even finish in the alloted 36 hours.

If you stretched an autocross course out to 1000 miles the margin times would spread out. Can you imagine trying to concentrate on course for 20+ hours.

Finishing the Baja at all is impressive as hell. Then to drive back. Love to see what other production vehicles could match that at any length of time.

But that doesn't take away from the point of the thread. That's an interesting fact.

Open Road Racing has very slim margins. The 2016 Big Bend Open Road Race winning times were 0.003 seconds off perfect. On a 118 mile course (59 miles X 2). In Grand Sport 2 (135 MPH) class, being 0.007 seconds slow was only good for fourth.

Appleseed wrote: Many times the Class 11 Bugs (stock) don't even finish in the alloted 36 hours.

Meaning some do, which means that a stock vw bug is a better off road weapon than a new raptor. Hmmmm. :)

In 2003 we (265,000 troops) took Iraq (1.1 million troops). We took 196 casualties while dealing out somewhere around 30,000 KIA. That was a pretty lopsided victory.

ebonyandivory wrote: Finishing the Baja at all is impressive as hell. Then to drive back. Love to see what other production vehicles could match that at any length of time.

In order to simply finish, you need to average nearly 28 mph for a day and a half. I think the "average speed" readout on one of my daily drivers is in the 30's - and that's only when moving. Agreed, just making it to the finish is really impressive.

Well, since I am rather money-limited motorsports participant, but who also has fairly advanced wrenching skills, my personall racing philosophy is thus (and even if I win a Power Ball tomorrow I would still do the same):

I would rather lose by a lap because I built my own car, than win by an inch because I could afford for a race shop to build it for me.

Then you want to race offroad. Look into Ultra4.

OR - you're perfect to open a race shop. Then you can watch your cars lose by a lap AND get paid!

In reply to Keith Tanner:

I imagine there is a bit of chagrin to be had when your customers beat you in a car you built for them...

If you're a better builder than driver, that will happen. You win either way.

If you have seen a trophy truck at speed in rough country, it is easy to see that they will do far better than double the speed of a stock anything. I would expect a bigger margin actually.

In reply to bearmtnmartin:

~36" of travel and 800+ horsepower does some amazing things right? I never get tired of watching trophy truck videos.

^this^ that video is awesome, I've watched plenty of trophy trucks but that really puts it into perspective. it would be cool to see that same run by other vehicles.

D2W wrote: ^this^ that video is awesome, I've watched plenty of trophy trucks but that really puts it into perspective. it would be cool to see that same run by other vehicles.

Just imagine how much driver fatigue that saves. Anyone in a stock vehicle will be getting beat to death.

It's a bit of a cheat, though. The body of that truck is not sitting motionless, it's still banging up and down. You can see heads moving and look at the edge of the road. I'm not dissing their ability to soak up bad ground - I really want to build a "high speed on a bad road" vehicle - but they're not THAT good. Just watch in-car with trophy trucks, the guys are still getting tossed around.

You would be pissing blood from one kidney at the end of the race. But in the Raptor you might piss the whole kidney out.

Counterpoint

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKQdlXvbWSU

I think we've found the source document for the phrase 'Hold my beer and watch this!' ; you can see the guy carrying the driver's beer back to him at :31 .

I think the EMTs are the only ones without beer in hand.

bearmtnmartin wrote: You would be pissing blood from one kidney at the end of the race. But in the Raptor you might piss the whole kidney out.

I think that's what I was trying to say