Off-road endurance racing; is designed to test both driver and machine to the absolute limit. To find out more about what goes into prepping and eventually driving in this competitive form of motorsport, I was extremely fortunate to have recently caught up with off-road endurance racer and more recently filmmaker, Amy Lerner.
Amy is someone who has taken part in several off-road style racing events around the world, including the Australasian Safari Rally, the Mint 400 and the Rallye Aïcha des Gazelles du Maroc, and crucially, the grueling Dakar rally in the deserts of North Western Africa. With so much experience under her belt, she was able to give me a first-hand account of the action that unfolds, both leading up to the race and driving in the rally itself.
Although Amy hasn’t raced in the Baja 1000 yet, she has followed it and chased it a couple of times, most recently during the filming of ‘One More Win.’ It is a documentary that celebrates off-road racing legend Rod Hall’s 50 consecutive Baja races, which Amy directed.
She also touched upon some of the challenges she and her team had to endure while shooting the film. During the course of my interview with her, she was able to highlight the differences between the Baja 1000 and Dakar rallies. Both races are very different animals and are equally taxing in their own right.
The Early Days
I began by asking Amy about where her interest in cars and motorsports came from. Well, it all began when she was a kid. Her father was an antique car collector. As soon as she was old enough to reach the steering wheel, she’d pretend to drive whatever car her dad was working on at the time. When she was older, taking a training class at the Skip Barber Racing School was her first step towards a future in motorsports, but any chance of a racing career had to be put on hold as Amy had to attend to her children.
I Grew up with a dad who collected antique vehicles. As soon as I could get my hands to reach the steering wheel, I would sit and pretend to drive a Model T, a Model A, or whatever he was working on - Amy Lerner
It wasn’t until a dozen or so years later that she read up about the Gazelle rally in Morocco, which is an entirely off-road women's endurance rally. It was then that the adventure bug really bit her and there was no looking back past that point. Having raced in the Dakar rally twice, in the classic division with a 1982 Porsche, Amy told me that her favorite form of racing remains stage rallies. She gets to have maximum fun and do a lot of miles along the way.
How The Dakar Differs From The Baja 1000
Now obviously, with an endurance race, you have a lot that goes into it even before you show up at the racing venue. Think sponsors, prepping your ride and yourself. Amy says that you should give yourself a year to help you prep well and while you don’t have to be Superman, working on your core strength can go a long way in enabling you to do weeks of driving.
It's probably two and a half weeks from start to finish for something like the Dakar. So there are 12 competitive days and the slot in a rest day in the middle. So 13 days of rally, but then you are there three to four days ahead of time because you got to go through the technical verifications, safety verifications, make sure that your helmet and race suit, your fireproof socks, etc; everything’s got to be up to safety standards.
As opposed to the Baja 1000, which is a different type of event, it is not a stage rally. It’s a start-to-finish event. So just driving the 1000ish miles can be can take anywhere between 14 hours if you’re in a Trophy Truck and 30+ hours if you’re based in a production-based vehicle.
Amy also touched upon another unique aspect of the Baja 1000. Unlike the Dakar where you need to rely on the notes from your co-driver, with the Baja 1000, notes and course maps are released a month before the race. This allows drivers to prerun the course to make them a little better prepared, come D-Day.
So if you have a chance to go to Mexico, you can actually pre-run the course. A race like that typically gets broken up into sections. So you can go have a pre-run, at a good speed, but not race speed. You can make notes. There’s a tree, there’s a sharp turn, this is confusing, make sure you get the right left turn, stuff like that. It really adds up during the race and gives you a sense of what’s happening, and you can go a little faster in the race. You'll have a better sense of what’s ahead of you.
To Finish First, You Must First Finish
This is a famous quote from Rod Hall himself. Nearly half the participants who start the Baja 1000 don’t see the chequered flag in La Paz. Amy told me that little has changed with the Baja 1000 over the past five decades.
I don’t know where the number stand currently. But saying that 50% of the people who start, don’t finish is probably reasonably correct.
Starting out in Ensenada, the route meanders through the peninsula and is never the same. It varies slightly every year, with countless tracks to choose from. She adds that although Automotive technology has advanced significantly tire-wise, frame-wise, and engine-wise, the Baja 1000 today is more challenging than ever.
It's still tough out there. The terrain itself is worse today than it was back in 1967. Back then you did not have 10s of 1000s of people, who were there, either racing or driving fast for fun on those trails. So, off-road trails tend to get worse the more they get used. You know, Rod Hall in his Bronco, said that it had a suspension of a wheel barrel. This actually remains true to this day, because I was just in it, not too long ago.
Getting Out Of The Woods
When you’re taking part in any form of motorsport, let alone something that’s out and about in some of the most hostile environments on the planet, it is never smooth sailing and things are bound to go wrong. So as a driver, some degree of mechanical know-how can go a long way, in helping you get back on the road as soon as possible. However, Amy noted that more than the driver, it's the co-driver that does most of the heavy lifting if the vehicle gets stuck.
It’s the codriver that has to be mechanically sound. If we're doing a field repair, or if you were to get stuck, you only want to spend as much time it takes to get something fixed, or it's just changing a tire or digging out of the sand. You don’t want to add to the amount of time it takes for the driver to strap back in. That said, understanding your car, why it works the way it works if you hear a sound, and what the sound is, is definitely helpful.
The rules for support vehicles that carry spares are also different for both races. With the Baja 1000, you can have a chase team leading you on the course to assist with any breakdowns. Not the case with the Dakar.
In the Dakar rally, you’re not allowed to have a chase team. What you are allowed to do is hire a car, and put your own entry in for another vehicle whose sole purpose is to repair your car if it breaks, carrying all the necessary spare parts.
A Legacy Like No Other
Amy owes a big part of her success to her friend and mentor, Rod Hall. The two had become friends during her early training days. Years after she had initially trained with him, she ran into him in 2015 at the off-road hall of fame awards center, before the SEMA show in Las Vegas.
So, Rod gave me my first off-road driving lesson, when I was getting ready for that Morocco rally, I had no idea who he was, didn’t know he was famous, and he was so self-deprecating and humble.
He told her how he was just two years away from his 50th consecutive Baja 1000 race. That would be record-setting. His ‘68 Ford Bronco, which recently featured on Jay Leno’s Garage is also the only production 4x4 to have ever won the Baja 1000.
He would be the only one to have raced the first 50 Baja 1000s. Considering how Rod had seen the sport evolve over five decades, Amy felt that there was no one better to tell that story than Rod himself. She hit him up the very next day to find out if he’d be interested in doing a film about his experience.
Rod, I had this crazy idea. How about I do a documentary about these two years of racing that you’re going to be doing, up to the 50th record-setting attempt, and weave into all these great stories, the history of Baja racing?
Now, Rod had been previously approached many times to do either a book, or a movie, and he was never really interested. According to him, fame was never a priority, as it is short-lived. But since it was Amy asking this time, he agreed, and ‘One More Win’ was officially on.
Shooting In The Dirt
As someone who had no prior experience in filmmaking, Amy had a tough time convincing and putting a film crew together. It involved countless cold calls, but eventually she managed to get some pros on board.
I ended up somehow with a whole bunch of Brits, who had heard of the Baja 1000 but didn’t know who Rod was. But they really got captured by the story, Rod as the man, his family dynamic, and then the health struggles he was going through. Everybody came to be really invested in what we were trying to do, which was amazing.
However, the real challenge was yet to come. Shooting in the dirt. Unlike something like Drive To Survive, where you’re on the race track, you know your angles, you set your cameras up and things are far more predictable, it's simply not the case with shooting a documentary on a 1,000-mile desert course. She just didn’t have the budget to account for any missed opportunities or retakes.
I talked to a bunch of people who know the Baja terrain really well, and said this is going to look really good, the car is going to be coming through deep sand, or going around a mountainside. We set somebody up there and in the worst case, you’re going to get some good shots. We were really fortunate to capture a sequence, where Rod got stuck in the sand which, you know, Rod Hall does not get stuck.
In the end, it was all about having enough people, at enough places, and then you just cross your fingers and hope that they would be able to capture some sequences that would make for compelling
storytelling. Motorsport fanatic or not, One More Win is available on multiple streaming platforms including Amazon Prime and Apple TV, is a must-watch.
Women In Motorsport
Turning it back to Amy again. As a sport that is mostly male-dominated, I wanted her take on women in motorsport today and some of the myths surrounding it. What were some of the experiences and challenges that she had to face while racing abroad?
Amy says that there is no reason why women can’t participate. Sure some degree of preconditioning is needed, but it's not beyond the reach of your average woman. She adds that the attitudes are great and people are supportive of anybody who is participating.
I would say, and I always say as a woman, that I don’t see any physical reason why any woman can’t get behind the driver's seat and drive a rally car and do an endurance event like this. If I can manage it, there are a lot of people that can manage it. And addressing the other bits. You call them myths. I mean that's what a lot of it is.
You meet people who have opinions about who should or shouldn’t be doing things, no matter where you go in the world in life, but I have found going to rallies where I get a trophy because I was the only woman who showed up to drive.
She goes on to add that over the 12 years since she’s been in the racing world, she has seen a steady increase in the number of women taking part. A perfect example of that is Rod Hall’s granddaughter, Shelby Hall, who has taken to the wheel of the old ‘68 Bronco. Amy adds that if you want to go do it, they should go do a race. Ask questions. Hang out with people who live and breathe cars, because there’s nothing more that folks with a passion for motorsport love talking about.
To Sum It Up
Now, prior to speaking with Amy, my exposure to the world of off-road racing was fairly limited. I was aware of the Dakar rally as I had watched a documentary series (Race To Dakar) about British biker and adventurer Charley Boorman, taking part in the rally nearly a decade ago.
But now, learning about her go-getter attitude serves as an inspiration indeed and it goes to show that if you have grit, passion, and the strength to persevere, you can achieve almost anything you want. As for her future endeavors, Amy said that she currently doesn’t have anything on her calendar for 2023 yet, but they’re looking to build a different vehicle that would enable them to end up at the podium at the Dakar Classic.