Rough Race In Mexico For LeSage

The first Ultra4 Race in Mexico lived up to expectations. Racing in San Felipe, Mexico has benefits and challenges not present at races in the US. Some of the benefits are the awesome food, and untouched rugged terrain. The challenges are logistics and lack of resources. Teams are truly self-sufficient and forced to be extra resourceful in Mexico.
My truck, the racecar and two other team members drove down Wednesday to get settled and set up more wheel/tire/balls before pre-running on Thursday. We had an awesome house in a gated community, not far from the ocean or the race course. Another truck, UTV and two team members arrived Thursday morning and we began our pre-run. The course was a 22 mile loop of classic San Felipe terrain with new rock sections that had never been driven before. Having two UTVs pre-running together was very beneficial because we could try multiple lines and mark our favorites quickly. I ran the challenging rock sections alone because they were too much for a brand new Wildcat XX to smash through. They wound through untouched canyons of rocks that allowed some creativity in line choice, and those lines would change and break in with each passing car.We finished our lap and focused on the qualifying loop. The qualifying loop was about 2 miles around a rock quarry with rocky hill climbs, drops and technical desert.

Friday morning another chase truck and 3 more people arrived. Qualifying was Friday afternoon, so I got to practice the lap a couple times, re-fined my lines and found some new ones. I put down a near perfect lap with one mistake that might have actually saved some time. I cut a corner by dropping off a ledge instead of slowing down for the berm. However, I carried more speed than I was anticipating and had to blow the end of the corner. Now off course but pointing the right way, I saw enough gap through the trees and decided to try it. I finished the lap with tree branches in the cockpit, but hit the rest of my marks and ended up on the pole by 0.007 seconds faster than Loren Healy. On the way home, I noticed one of the front axles had broken during qualifying. The rest of the evening was spent repairing the front end and preparing the car for the morning race.
Starting in the front is not ideal for me. I like to follow the lead pack and let them race each other until I can pick them off when it spreads out. We ran our pace and let a few of the fast cars pass us. Another front axle broke in the rocks, but I didn’t fully realize it until that tire needed to climb a steep rock and we got stuck. My Co-driver was able to pull on the winch line while I worked the steering wheel and rocked back and forth. A couple cars went past us before we got moving again, but we finished the rock trail and the rest of the race in 2wd. Similar to KOH, the car does amazingly well in the rocks even in 2wd. I just have to keep momentum up and let the suspension and tires do the work. On laps 2 and 3 I actually caught and passed multiple cars in the rocks because of the speed required to get through each section. We caught and passed a couple more cars in the desert, finishing physically 5th and 7th on corrected time.
I was happy to finish but a sense of disappointment was still present because the team knows how fast and capable the car, Mario and myself can be. I am currently 4th in Western Series points with Ridgecrest still in September. After winning Ridgecrest last year, expectations and preparation will be higher than ever.
This summer I plan on finding a solution to my axle problems, doing some recreational rock crawling, and competing in the Gorman Ridge Rally.