Beemers Over Baja
BEEMERS OVER BAJA
BMW'S MOST RECENT ASSAULT on the granddaddy of North American off-road racing, the SCORE Baja 1000, was also its most successful. Team riders Gaston Rahier and Eddy Hau captured their class and finished eighth overall, fifth among motorcycles.
Both Rahier and Hau, in their firstever Baja appearance, turned in steady, workmanlike rides to win Class 30, for riders over 30 years of age. The BMW duo completed the 730-mile course in 16 hours, 37 minutes, good for an average speed of 44 miles an hour across the fireroads, two-tracks, sandwashes, rocks, whoops, gullies and dry lake beds that make up the Baja 1000. That time was two hours slower than the overall winners, Honda XRmounted Randy Morales and Chuck Miller, and 10 minutes slower than the winning 250cc-class entry. But Rahier and Hau did post a better time than all the cars and trucks.
Rahier, a Belgian, may be wellknown to American racing fans for his three 125cc World Motocross Championships while riding for Suzuki in the mid-Seventies, and for his 1984 Paris-Dakar win, but West German Hau is certainly an unknown. For the record. Hau has been successful on the European Two-Day Enduro and ISDE circuits, most recently in the larger four-stroke classes. And he was European Enduro Champion in 1982 and ’83.
For first-time Baja competitors, Rahier and Hau amazingly had no major problems: no crashes, no flats, no burned-out headlights. Their only concern was a rash of broken front spokes, easily solved by swapping wheels during rider changes at gas stops. The only thing that slowed the Europeans down was, quite simply, a lack of experience. Competing against riders who knew every nook, cranny and shortcut of the course, Rahier and Hau had only pre-run the route once, which makes their win even more impressive. Rahier said of the event, “We enjoyed coming here to race; technically, it was a very good course. The only problem was that it was our first time here. We tried to do the best we could do.” Certainly, the best they could do was good enough for BMW, since that company’s last two Baja efforts have garnered less-than-spectacular results. In 1 980, rider Herbert Schek. well-known for his many ISDT rides on BMWs, was accidently directed off course by a Mexican trooper and spent an hour combing the residential streets of Ensenada before finding the finish line. In 1983, BMW pinned its hopes on Paris-Dakar winner Hubert Auriol and former U.S. motocross star Rich Eierstedt, only to have the team retire early in the race with driveshaft troubles.
Has its 1984 success whetted BMW’s appetite for continued involvement in North American offroad racing? Asked if the big Twins would return to Baja, BMW North America motorcycle chief JeanPierre Bailby, a man who rides a stock R80 G/S in the Mexican dirt, could only grin and say. “Yes.”
Dale Brown
