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Salvatierra And Company Win Baja 1000 B olivian Juan Carlos Salvatierra and his five-rider team over- came a pair of pre-running snafus to win their first SCORE overall motorcycle race. The team pilot- ed its KTM 450 SX-F in a winning time of 26 hours, 37 minutes and 17 seconds. The team leader, Sal - vatierra, was injured while prerun- ning, but he mustered enough to start the race in La Paz and ride a short distance before handing off the bike to a teammate. Salvatierra, 42, had a team of four riders doing the bulk of the work: Shane Logan, Argentinian international rally racer Diego Llanos, Carter Klein and Corbin McPherson. Starting first and leading the entire race, Salvatierra and his team finished just over 13 min - utes ahead of the 3x Husqvarna FE 450 team led by Ciaran Naran. In earning their first SCORE overall motorcycle race victory, Salvatierra started the race and quickly turned the motorcycle over to Logan, who rode to race mile 175. McPherson rode from race mile 175 to race mile 350, Llanos rode from race mile 350 to race mile 767, Logan rode again from race mile 767 to race mile 960, Klein rode from race mile 960 to race mile 1243 where Logan hopped back in the saddle to take it to the finish line. The winning team had a speed aver - age of 49.34 miles per hour. "It feels really good to be at the finish, especially with this being the second-longest SCORE race ever," Salvatierra said. "It's great to think we made history here. We had a very eventful week with two of our riders getting injuries and another one getting sick. But we have lions in our team and Shane and Diego had to step up for us and take sections from other riders without pre-running them and did a wonderful job. I couldn't do my section because I got injured on Friday. The bike was flawless during the entire race. Outside of tire changes and regular maintenance things, we didn't have to do anything on it." Unfortunately, the race was marred by the serious injury to SLR Honda's Kade Tinkler-Walker, who went down around mile 823. Walker had taken over riding du - ties from Mark Samuels shortly before he crashed in a remote area and suffered a head injury. The recently crowned NGPC Pro2- class Champion fell shortly after 3 p.m. Thursday, November 16, and has not yet gained consciousness (as of Sunday, November 19). According to the SLR team, Tinkler-Walker was located approx - imately 30 minutes after the crash, but it took several hours to get him extradited to an ambulance and eventually flown to a hospital. "Kade definitely needs our prayers and is not out of the woods," said Samuels Sunday via social media. "Most important is he's got amazing help around him. He is incredibly strong. We will keep you posted on updates as soon as we can. Thank you to all the team members; this has been an incredibly heavy situa - tion for us. Thank you, everyone." He was flown to Scripps Hospital in San Diego in critical condition. The runner-up team, headed by the rider of record Naran, teamed WIND IN THE P42 The Juan Carlos Salvatierra team won this year's Baja 1000. PHOTOS: GETSOMEPHOTO/ TRACKSIDE PHOTO