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Don \u201cThe Snake\u201d Prudhomme may have stepped away from professional drag racing, but his competitive juices still fiercely burn. The NHRA standout – in both Top Fuel and Funny Car racing – recently turned his activities to the dirt, where he\u2019s twice raced in Baja, California\u2019s Mexican 1000. Prudhomme is hoping the third time is the charm as he preps for the 2021 Yokohama NORRA Mexican 1000, scheduled for April 23-30 in Baja California.<\/p>\n
While still in his mid-20s, Prudhomme attempted to compete in this off-road race, only to have that effort halted by engine malfunctions before the contest began. After a five-decade hiatus, he\u2019s going to try again, thanks to a partnership with MAVTV. Prudhomme, who celebrated his 80th birthday this week, is racing in the Modified Turbo UTV class and driving a Can-Am UTV.<\/p>\n
Prudhomme competed in the seminal Baja race in both 2018 and 2019; in the latter contest, fuel pump issues on the final day of competition had his team battling simply to get to the finish line, where they recorded a 16th place result. For this year\u2019s effort, together with navigator and support driver Rich Minga, Prudhomme is looking to improve on that effort; once again, he\u2019ll have PJ Jones, son of on- and off-road racing legend Parnelli Jones, assisting with equipment and on-course support.<\/p>\n
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\u2018”I want to run hard and have fun,\u201d Prudhomme said about the race he\u2019s been fixated on for so long. \u201cThe great thing about this race is you don\u2019t know the course until a couple days before you take off. NORRA (National Off-Road Racing Association) doesn\u2019t want anyone pre-running the course, so that will make it exciting. I feel more confident every time I do this and I have to thank MAVTV for coming along for the ride.<\/p>\n
\u201cI will be doing a lot of the driving, but Rich will also jump behind the wheel and I\u2019ll navigate. It is a long route and we want to be competitive,\u201d he confirmed. \u201cI hated to miss the race last year, because of everything going on, but there was no way I was going to miss this race again. It\u2019s just too much fun.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lucas Oil director of partnership marketing, Brandon Bernstein said the company\u2019s decision to work with Prudhomme was a natural. \u201cTeaming up with a legend like Don Prudhomme for the Mexican 1000 is a great partnership for MAVTV and Lucas Oil. The interest in off-road racing is growing every year and there is a huge audience of motorsports viewers on MAVTV. We know tons of people will be keeping an eye on Prudhomme\u2019s progress throughout the race.\u201d<\/p>\n
NORRA\u2019s Mexican 1000 is a five-day, off-road rally that celebrates off-road racing history and vintage off-road machines. Cars, buggies, trucks and motorcycles from all eras of Baja off-road racing are eligible to participate in a variety of classes. The race starts in Ensenada, Baja California on Friday, April 23rd and ends Friday, April 30th, again in Ensenada. The course has been re-routed for 2021 so that race participants work within COVID protocols. The contest is a 1,000-mile loop of the Baja peninsula.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Don \u201cThe Snake\u201d Prudhomme may have stepped away from professional drag racing, but his competitive juices still fiercely burn. The NHRA standout – in both Top Fuel and Funny Car racing – recently turned his activities to the dirt, where he\u2019s twice raced in Baja, California\u2019s Mexican 1000.<\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":65,"featured_media":78678,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[17,3470,5029,22],"tags":[5614,2433,6325,433,41,28,1632],"class_list":["post-78677","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-guest-column","category-news","category-racing","category-event-coverage","tag-anne-proffit","tag-baja","tag-baja-1000","tag-don-prudhomme","tag-news","tag-off-road","tag-racing"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/Snake-with-race-car-2021-Mexican-1000-e1617827811396.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p42YSK-ksZ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78677","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/65"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=78677"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78677\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":78680,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78677\/revisions\/78680"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/78678"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78677"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78677"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78677"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}