Cody Rahders Looks to Build on Experience from Challenging Baja 1000
- Dec 19, 2016
Cody has driven in off-road races for years, primarily running short-track sprint races in the Lucas Oil Regional Off-Road Series with a variety of vehicles in the Superlites, Pro Lites, and the UTV classes. That included a pair of Production 1000-class championships in his RZR, but Cody and his dad, Doug (the only other full-time team member), decided to go big in 2015 with a first visit to the Baja 1000 run by SCORE International Off-Road Racing. They entered their RZR as a Class 19 UTV and while they didn’t finish their first Baja in 2015, the Rahders decided to run a full season of desert racing in 2016. “We decided to change our game and step it up a little bit,” Cody said. “I love Mexico, love the people and love racing there...I went from racing 20 minutes to being in the car for maybe 15 hours. It’s nothing to take lightly.”
The 1,000-mile race, however, proved to be a greater challenge. The initial plan was to have co-driver James Hill drive the opening hours of the race with Cody taking over at around Mile 400. James left the starting line in sixth place but quickly picked up several positions to reach second place. Around Mile 80, however, he came across a bottleneck in the road and, in trying to go around it, the RZR ended up getting hit by a larger Class 10 Buggy that had caught up from the bottleneck. That hit broke the axle at the time, but it wasn’t apparent when James took fuel and service at Mile 90. The RZR pressed on until the axle failed six miles later. The team’s chase truck found the Polaris and the team were able to fix the destroyed hub, though it took several hours. Wanting only to finish, they persevered, but a later service stop was soon required when James’ co-driver became ill from bad food or the brutal terrain (possibly both). Cody took over as co-driver with more than 900 miles remaining and nearly 300 until he was scheduled to take over as driver.
Before Cody could drive, however, disaster struck. At around Mile 165, the vehicle they were following braked hard and James swerved to miss it. The road jogged at that point on an off-camber curve and with soft, loose dust to the outside of the corner, the Polaris dug in and rolled over. The crash bent the lower control arm and with no replacement on hand, the team did everything they could to reshape it with hammers, rocks, jacks, and even the chase truck by driving over it. Unable to fix their stricken Polaris, the team had to withdraw from the race. While heartbroken by the retirement, Cody knows the learning curve couldn’t be steeper than at Baja. “I thought we were done after the first time we broke, but we were able to fix it,” Cody said. “It’s a definitely a bummer, but that’s Baja.”
With a full engineering course load at Cuyamaca College to balance with racing, Cody’s unsure about his plans for longer-distance races in 2017. However if he’s racing down the Baja Peninsula next November, expect to see a more measured, mature approach from him. “I think the biggest thing we learned was just just taking your time. You don’t really have to press as hard as you’d think. People break and aren’t going as hard as you think they are,” Cody said. “We did good with what we had, but we lacked in areas where experience would have really helped.” | |||||
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