Seth Quintero was two, maybe three years old when everything changed for him. He didn’t know it at the time, but Dana Brown’s extraordinary film Dust to Glory would shape the life and early career of the southern Californian.
The 2005 movie tells the story of the Baja 1000.
“I could recite every word, every line from that movie over and over again,” said Quintero. “I’ve watched it a thousand times. That was really the start.”
It’s not hard to understand the inspiration, with unforgettable lines like: “You don’t know fear until you look in the rear-view and see Robby Gordon.”
Growing up in San Diego, Quintero points to two well-trodden routes for expending adrenaline: surfing or snowboarding. He followed his dad to the desert and the dunes. And found a third.
“Every holiday we could, we would be in the desert,” he said. “My dad was a bike racer and I fell in love with riding dirt bikes. Dad got into a bad accident and mom was not too happy about it, to say the least. That cut me short of being able to race bikes – but I was lucky to be around at the time UTV racing was taking off.”
Quintero has become a mainstay of Toyota's rally-raid lineup, but this year will go rallying too
A Polaris RZR 150 for Christmas in 2013 did the rest.
Seth was up, running and racing. And soon winning everything. That prompted a call from Red Bull and the start of an extraordinary Dakar story (even if it did get off to something of a false start…). That Dakar story is unfolding in the shape of another Saudi story right now, as Quintero sets about the Middle East in search of his first win on an event he led last year.
Post-Dakar, there’s a new chapter starting as he heads for America’s ARA National Championship aboard Toyota Gazoo Racing’s all-new GR Corolla RC2. From April’s 100 Acre Wood Rally, Seth will become a familiar face on the US rally scene.
How did he make that leap? How did he land the seat in the car Jari-Matti Latvala developed?
Listen in to the latest edition of SPIN, The Rally Pod.
