SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2009

Joe Bacal — From Cancer Survivor to Baja 500 Champion

by Paul Williamsen

For half a century, Toyota distributors around the world have supported off-road motorsports as a way to prove and promote the capability and durability of Toyota trucks such as the Land Cruiser, Prado, HiLux and Tacoma. Legends have developed on every continent about the incredible feats of the Land Cruiser. But despite the off-road capabilities of the LX and GX, there’s no record of a Lexus distributor having supported one in rallying or desert racing.

However, in February 2009, Lexus USA provided a slightly used prototype LX 570 to Joe Bacal to prepare for off-road competition in SCORE’s professional Stock Full-Size class and in the Best In The Desert series.

Why Joe Bacal? Joe is a rookie driver and his team, JTGrey Racing, had no prior track record. Joe is a cancer survivor. He won a battle with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma with help from the Cancer Treatment Centers of America. As he got his health back, he re-assessed what he wanted to do in life and with his family’s support, decided to work towards his dream of becoming a professional desert racer.

Lexus doesn’t run a “make-a-wish” program. Joe Bacal is a ten-year veteran of the Toyota Arizona Proving Grounds, the factory test-track where he was a chassis development engineer for the LX 570 and the Land Cruiser, the GX and the 4Runner, the Tacoma, Tundra, and FJ Cruiser, and many of the TRD performance parts for these models. He was personally coached in desert
driving by Ivan “The Ironman” Stewart. Joe was the first driver to take an FJ Cruiser through the Rubicon Trail, at a time when there were only a few prototype FJs in the country. That was Joe rooster-tailing the FJ Cruiser up Cadillac Hill in all the photos and video you’ve seen. Just months after his release from the Cancer Treatment Center in the fall of 2007, Joe drove a Class 7S Tacoma in the Baja 1000 with the “Long Beach Racers,” an all-Toyota team with extensive Baja experience, including a victory at the Baja 1000 in 2004.

In March, Joe started building the LX 570 into a race-truck at the Geiser Brothers’ shop in Phoenix. Known for engineering and constructing
beautiful, tube-framed, Baja-winning, unlimited Trophy Trucks, the Geiser Brothers engineered and fabricated a full custom roll-cage in 2" thick-wall chrome-moly steel from the front push-bar of the LX all the way through the body and out to the rear tire rack and push bar. They designed and fabbed complete under-car armor, a 40-gallon fuel cell with dual in-tank fuel pumps, routed the fresh-air intake to inside the vehicle, and wired a complete power distribution system for the additional lights, radios and navigation
equipment required for desert racing. Plus they added loud pipes, of course.

With technical help from TRD USA and Toyota MotorSports, they were able to coax 11" of front wheel travel and over 13" in the rear of the LX by replacing the adaptive air suspension with Old Man Emu coil springs built for the Australian Land Cruiser, on custom coil-over King Racing shocks. The complete factory dash went back in, the real wood and semi-aniline leather accents nicely complementing the black suede SPARCO steering wheel and racing seats.

The first race on Joe’s wish list was the SCORE Tecate Baja 500, the notoriously brutal, non-stop, 500-mile lap around the peninsula of Mexico’s Baja dé California, starting and finishing in the port city of Ensenada.

About mid-April, Joe was getting a little nervous about the under hood complexity of the big Lexus...

Joe Bacal, cancer survivor and Baja 500 Stock Full-Size class champion.
Photo by Shai Harary, head1stdesign.com

Map courtesy of Steve Springs at Two Springs Consulting, LLC (www.TwoSpringsLLC.com)

The donor vehicle in its original, shiny red paint.
Photo courtesy of JTGrey Racing