Baja 1000 racer prepares in Idyllwild

By David Jerome
Correspondent

Often these pages carry portraits of locals old and new. This week we present a conversation with a pair of “part-timers,” at least for the present. Michael Steele and his wife Cynthia, normally residents of Florida, have spent the last few weeks in Idyllwild recovering from this summer’s Baja 500, and preparing for the Baja 1000, one of the world’s most famous, and most grueling, off-road races. From Nov. 18 to 20, they and their team will attempt the 48-hour desert marathon from Ensenada to La Paz.

TC: “I saw your video from this year’s Baja 500; that was quite an adventure. I understand you are not a lifelong racer?”

MS: “That was my first go at this. I call myself ‘Idiot Racing’ because I have no idea what I’m doing; we’ve learned everything along the way. Most people come from an off-roading family … I’ve taken a different approach. I’ve been wanting to do this for 20 years; I’ve been a lifelong fan. It is one of the greatest races in the world and the beautiful part is that absolutely anyone can participate.

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“I built the car in my garage, never built a car before, never raced before, never welded before. I wanted to learn. I needed a hands-on experience. The class that I’ve chosen is known as class 11, a ‘stock’ Volkswagen Beetle. It’s actually pretty far from stock, but … modified stock components.

“There are not as many old Beetles in Florida as there are out here in California, and what is there is rusted. I bought the bottom half of a Beetle and started on that. It was four months later I was able to buy the top half. First two months were all rust repair, after learning how to weld. I had to do a roll cage that would pass the rigorous SCORE quality inspection. Before you sign up for the race, you have to have a safety inspection tab on your chassis.”

TC: “How did you learn all this?”

MS: “I have to give massive thanks to the people I met along the way. I started a social media campaign. I started making friends with everyone involved in off-road racing about how to do the actual modifications that are required. Every single part had to be modified to survive the world’s hardest race.

“There are people who have been doing this class of racing for over 20 years, and they know all the little things that make a car survive. They were kind enough to share some of their secrets with me.”

TC: “How long did the build take?”

MS: “Eight months in my garage. People who know what they are doing take a lot less time than that. At that point I came out here to meet all those people I knew online, make some last-minute adjustments, and run the race, which, as you know, didn’t go that well. We had some problems, mostly carburetor problems, very low on horsepower. When we got to that hill, we couldn’t make it up and destroyed the car even more in the process. We broke one of my front shocks, blew a ball joint; there was the alternator pulley causing more problems. One more thing, one of the drivers kind of blew up the motor.”

TC: “You have chase cars to back you up?”

MS: “We ran with two driver teams and a chase car, which is considered short-handed. This time we will have four driver teams (driver and navigator) and four chase cars; the drivers switch off, leapfrogging. One of the most important parts of the driving teams is being able to fix the car when it breaks. Arguably a good mechanic is more valuable than a good driver.”

After their breakdown, only 50 miles into the race, the team had to leave the car and go find a tow back to a road. But when they returned to the hill, the car was gone. It had been stolen.

MS: “My wife had some cell signal. She is the one who put the word out, social media, telling everyone that the car was gone and asking for help. The message reached people in America and Mexico and the world. A nice kid, local to Baja, saw my car and saw the post and got ahold of us. The police had gotten word, and when we arrived, they were looking after the car for us.

“Over the summer I rebuilt and improved it. All those areas that fell flat in the 500, we’ve made a significantly better car. The 500 was a test … you don’t walk into the 1000 without knowing what you are doing.”

TC: “How did you end up in Idyllwild?”

MS: “Me and my wife made this decision over the summer; if we’re going to make a go of this, we need to be here in Southern California with the experienced racers, about 75% of them. I go out to their shops, we work on my car together.”

Cynthia adds, “At first, we picked Idyllwild because we liked the idea of living in the mountains to escape the heat of the valley while also having access to the desert areas. It was more affordable than other parts of Southern California, and our landlord was incredibly supportive of a total stranger building a Baja race car on his property.

What we didn’t appreciate at the time was how much we would genuinely love it here. It’s wonderful to live in an artists’ community where everyone appreciates and supports big dreams that other people would consider to be outlandish. Plus, everyone is so incredibly nice. We may, in the near future, be considering making Idyllwild our permanent home, depending on how the race goes.”

Find out more about the Steeles’ big project at idiotracing.com. Mike also is very active on Instagram (idiot.racing).