Baja 1000

INTRODUCTION

As the World Series is to baseball and the Super Bowl to football, the legendary Tecate SCORE Baja 1000 stands as tall at the pinnacle of the motorsports world today as it did when it began 40 years ago.

It's the oldest and most well known of all desert races, and it remains as the single most appealing accomplishment to a driver. Since 1967, the mother of all desert races hasbeen run over the mysterious Baja California peninsula every year except 1974 when the international fuel crisis forced a cancellation.

The Tecate SCORE Baja 1000 has captured the imagination of the entire world as entries have come not only from every state in the United States, but also has attracted racers from Argentina, Australia, Bahamas, Belgium, Canada, England, Finland, France,Germany, Guam, Holland, Italy, Japan, New Caledonia, New Zealand, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Uruguay, Yugoslavia as well as the host country of Mexico.

The first known record run occurred in 1962. Dave Ekins and Bill Robertson Jr. timed their trip from Tijuana to La Paz on a pair of Honda 250 motorcycles. Ekins made it in 39 hours, 54 minutes, Robertson in lessthan an hour slower. There were no official timers, of course, and to establish that they had made the trip, the two motorcycle racers time-stamped a sheet of paper in the Tijuana telegraph office and time-stamped it again at the telegraph office when they arrived in La Paz.

Capitalizing on the pioneer effort of Ekins and Robertson, Chevrolet commissioned car builder Bill Stroppe to prepare asmall fleet of trucks for the run to La Paz. Late that year they left Long Beach, Calif., and all of them reached La Paz. Advertising and publicity campaigns heralded the feat as "the roughest run under the sun."

"Without the SCORE Baja 1000, there just wouldn't be any desert racing," said Sal Fish, SCORE International's Chief Executive Officer. "The SCORE Baja 1000 continues to draw interest fromall over the world and we now find second and even third generation racers appearing at the starting line with their family patriarchs cheering for their off-spring. This event continues to be the focal point of the Optima SCORE Desert Series each year and to celebrate our 40th anniversary with another story-laden run down the Baja California peninsula, will surely add another colorful chapter tothe legacy of the SCORE Baja 1000."

Enthusiast Ed Pearlman founded the National Off Road Racing Association (NORRA) and established the Mexican 1000. It started officially in Tijuana on October 31, 1967 with 68 entries. They actually motored at leisure speeds to Ensenada and restarted the next day.

NORRA continued to organize the Mexican 1000, which came to be known as the Baja 1000. In1968, Pearlman moved the start of the race to Ensenada, where it stayed with one exception until 1993. In 1972 NORRA started at Mexicali and ran the first half of the race down the east coast of the peninsula through the treacherous Three Sisters section. Pre running for this race, Parnelli Jones and Walker Evans were among a group of competitors who nearly got swept out to sea during a tropicalstorm.

NORRA's last race, from Ensenada to La Paz, was in 1973. At that point, Mexican officials revoked NORRA's permits to stage races in Baja.

After the fuel crisis of 1974 forced local officials to cancel the event, SCORE International, founded by the late Mickey Thompson and soon to be headed by Sal Fish, was invited by the northern state of Baja California to hold the race in 1975. TheTecate SCORE Baja 1000 became a loop event starting and ending in Ensenada.

In 1979, the government of Baja California Sur granted permission to resume the Ensenada-to-La Paz format and SCORE has used this route intermittently ever since.

The 1979 race was notable for Walker Evans' overall win in a Dodge truck, the first truck to win the overall title of the race.

In its first 34 years, the...