A bonding race

What kind of wife wants an off-road quad racer as a gift? For that matter, what kind of mom and dad give their kid a steering wheel for Christmas?

Meet the Lenks. They’re three generations of off-road racers.

And when the world’s longest round-the-clock race, the 31-hour, 632-mile Baja 1000 off-road desert race, begins in the Ensenada, Mexico, desert Friday, this Newport Beach family will be there, hopefully standing atop the victory podium.

Racing begins and ends with Dale and Julie Lenk, the couple who share a love for desert sports and have ingrained it in their kids. As early as 12 years old, Julie raced around dunes in sand-rail buggies. Dale, meanwhile, also got early off-road racing lessons from his father. Dale one day found a girl who liked desert racing as much as he did.

“Julie was the kind of girl that I could take to Beverly Hills...”

“And get dirty,” Julie jumped in, chuckling.

Dale continued, “And walk the red carpet with and then take her down to the desert the next weekend and not complain.”

If anyone in the Lenk family was to complain about something, it’d probably be about not being around the desert enough. One of Dale and Julie’s two sons, Brett, 23, has never been on a surfboard despite living near the beach his whole life. As long as he remembers, he said, he wanted to race. So has the rest of the family.

Dale and Brett are now a father-and-son combo trying to break through to the podium in only their second year racing on the off-road desert circuit.

“We’re within reach, and it’s only our second year,” he says with a confident yet somewhat surprised voice. It just seems that racing is in the blood. Even though Julie stopped racing years ago to focus on the family and help oversee the Missing Lenk Motorsports team, she’ll still buckle up for an annual race benefiting breast cancer research.

“For a good cause, I love to tear it up,” she said with a competitive smile. “When I put on the helmet, I get that ‘Grrrr.’ I have to tame that a lot.”

When Dale turned 50 three years ago, he told his wife that one of his dreams was to race in the Baja 1000 desert race. As long as they didn’t go for broke on financing it and they were able to maintain the family, she was all for it, Dale said.

With money they’ve saved from Dale’s land-developing business, the family owns two large RVs to move the whole team from race to race, several types of off-road racing buggies and rents a garage in Costa Mesa where they can work on all their own vehicles. Even the youngest kids have gotten into the mix. Blake Lenk, whom his family considers a natural, and 10-year-old Carlye race in the Trophy Kart division. Don’t let the “Kart” fool you: These vehicles can get up to 80 mph.

Now all they need are sponsors, Dale and Julie said.

“Our goal is to finish and probably get a top-five finish,” Brett said.

If they’re able to break out of the pack — there’s dozens of other teams racing — and be able to call themselves among the best in just their third time racing the Baja 1000, the hobby that this family loves so much just might be the job this family loves so much. The race begins and ends Friday morning in Ensenada. It is scheduled to be televised on NBC in December.

JOSEPH SERNA may be reached at (714) 966-4619 or at [email protected].