Lee Green wins the Baja Championship on the Ducati DesertX Rally

Mark ‘Moly’ Molineux, Lead Instructor at the Sweet Lamb Ducati DRE Offroad Experience, reports back from the second Baja event held at Wales last weekend where Lee Green won the Baja Championship on a standard Ducati DesertX Rally.

The Baja is an event we do ourselves at Sweet Lamb and the course varies from an eight-mile course to an almost 20-mile course, all marked out and for all categories of bikes; adventure bikes, rally bikes, trail bikes. The courses have everything, a mixture of water crossings, sloppy mud, but they’re fast so suit the faster bikes and the better riders. We have wood sections as well and that slows everybody down because it gets quite bad in there. But as a marked course, there’s no navigation involved, just an all-out race basically. 

The normal order is to have a one and half hour race in the morning, lunchtime, and then another one and half hour race in the afternoon. So, three hours over Saturday, and then a three-hour race in one go starting early on Sunday.

The categories are open from 1300cc triples, twins, single cylinders, down to trail bikes and there’s also a ladies class. There’s a really broad spread of bikes. 

We entered the DesertX Rally in June, wit h Lee Green and Jack Brazier getting great results. Lee would have won it, but he got a puncture and lost a load of points. That was a bit disappointing, but his teammate helped him out which is what it’s all about. 

Last Sunday Lee came back and wanted to win and was not taking any prisoners. You start the race in line, rally bikes first, enduro bikes second, and so on down the line. So, Lee started his race from 77th. And by lap two, about 24 miles, Lee was up into third and Jack fifth. So, they had passed about 70-odd riders on the way through. They were absolutely flying.

To be fair, the conditions were absolutely appalling. We thought we were going to have to stop on Sunday morning, but we decided to carry on but just for an hour and a half as the weather was so bad. But the bikes never, ever missed a beat, they ran faultless. 

We raced the DesertX Rally as completely standard bikes. The only change we made was to put MT21 Pirelli tyres on the back to give us a little more grip in the corner. We left the suspension alone and we didn’t touch anything else. That was the intention to have them as standard. 

You always expect niggles on a race like this. But we didn’t touch the bikes, and they ran faultless. We only adjusted the chain on the Sunday morning and washed the bike. The Ducati has really proven itself, and against all the other rally and adventure bikes. There were 890 KTMS, Yamahas, Triumphs, they were all there, but the Ducati was faultless. 

We picked up a bit of damage from rocks and stones but that’s racing. There were a few incidents, broken screen and handguards, the natural stuff that happens when you’re racing. But quick fixes, into the pits, two minutes and you’re gone. We were really impressed, and a first and a third backs that up.

Following Lee and Jack’s success on the Ducati, we’ve been invited to go to Portugal and do a Baja there. And I think our boys, if we can get some support and do it, I think they could probably win it. Watch this space…