Team Quad75Dezert conquers adversity and places 5th at the 44th Annual
SCORE San Felipe 250. After a week of pre-running in Mexico and about
100 miles of testing and tuning on the race bike, the team woke early
March 10th to race the San Felipe 250. After a solid week the team was
feeling good about their sections and the course, however their race
would be plagued with problems, the least severe being stray cactus
injecting itself into riders, the most severe being a transmission
failure that would leave the team struggling for top speed for most of
the race.
Brandon Brown took the start until Race Mile 30. Within the first 10
miles Brandon nearly crashed, and was unable to recover until well after
he got off the bike. Jorie Williams took over from 30 and rode to
Morelia Junction at RM 94. It was during his section that 5th gear
broke, leaving only 1-4. Mechanic Kenny Sanford took the bike through
one of the roughest sections, from Morelia to Race Mile 127 where Jamie
Kirkpatrick got on the bike to complete the bottom loop of the course.
Unfortunately, shortly after Kenny got on the quad, 3rd gear gave way.
When Jamie made it around to pit at Race Mile 169, approximately 20
minutes behind the leading ATV team of Josh Frederick and Dillon
Zimmerman, he said the bike was stuck in gear, and the pit crew had to
push him to keep the bike from stalling when he left. He made it to RM
190 and Brandon took a 25 mile section to Race Mile 215 where he handed
the bike to Jorie Williams for the finish. Jorie struggled a little
through the new wash - he could only go as fast as 4th gear would allow,
but he had prerun it going much faster. He rolled through the finish in
the early afternoon, the 6th ATV to physically cross the finish line.
"It was frustrating, but we made it work," Brandon Brown said at the
finish line, "Obviously we would have liked to do better, and we'll be
working extra hard to prepare for the 500, but we finished." Kenny
Sanford stated that the team has never had a transmission failure and
was interested to open it up and investigate.
The team will return in June with the addition of Richie Brown to take
on the Baja 500. They would like to thank the following people and
companies for their support: Tire Blocks, S&S Motorsports, Waterwell
Developing & Surveys, Fox Racing Shox, Maxxis, Klim, Teixeira Tech, HMF
Racing, K&N Filters, CBR Performance, HB Jaeger, UPP Racing, Fullbore
Innovations, HiPer, Pro Armor, ProCaliber.com, IMS, TCS Motorsports,
Spider Grips, Warn Industries, QuadTech, Maxima, Precision Racing
Products, Fusion Graphixx, Powermadd, Asterisk, Wiseco, We All Ride,
Scott USA, Rekluse, Trail Tech, Streamline, Hot Rod Fabrication, KBH
Construction, Cycle Wash, Dune Tech, PitTraffic.com & Murray211
Special thanks to Sean McHugh, Dan Wade, Dan Kirkpatrick, Joey
Kirkpatrick, Brad Williams, Mary McHugh & Ken Sanford.