Off-Road Racing’s Crown Jewel Marks Milestone

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.
This weekend’s event will mark the 40th running of the race, which will start in Ensenada, Baja California, Mexico and finish in Cabo San Lucas, Baja California Sur, Mexico.
More than 300 entries, competing in 28 pro and six sportsman classes for cars, trucks, motorcycles and ATVs will be part of this year’s odyssey. Entries are expected from more than 40 U.S. states and 15 countries.
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 has been run over the mysterious Baja California peninsula every year except 1974 when the international fuel crisis forced a cancellation.

2007 Baja 1000 Course (Designed By Dave Walter For SCORE International)

The Baja 1000 has captured the imagination of the entire world as entries have come not only from every state in the United States; but the race also has attracted racers from Argentina, Australia, Austria, Bahamas, Brazil, Belgium, Canada, England, Finland, France, Germany, Guam, Guatemala, Holland, Israel, 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 less than 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 a small 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 President and CEO, which has sanctioned and produced the event since 1975. “The SCORE Baja 1000 continues to draw interest from all 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 SCORE Desert Series each year and to celebrate our 40th anniversary will surely add another colorful chapter to the legacy of the SCORE Baja 1000.”
Enthusiast Ed Pearlman founded the National Off Road Racing Ass’n and established the Mexican 1000. It started officially in Tijuana on Oct. 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. In 1968, 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 tropical storm.
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 headed soon after by Sal Fish, was invited by the northern state of Baja California to hold the race in 1975. The Tecate 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.
Among the drivers from other arenas who have tested the Baja were Indy Car racers Rick and Roger Mears, Parnelli Jones, Danny Ongias, Danny Sullivan, Jimmy Vasser, Buddy Rice, Sebastien Bourdais, Oriol Servia, Roberto Guerrero, Michel Jourdain, Jr., Johnny Unser and Mike and Robbie Groff, NASCAR’s Robby Gordon, Jimmie Johnson, Boris Said and Brendan Gaughan, SCCA legend Elliot Forbes-Robinson, World Rally Champion’s Armin Schwarz, world motorcycle champions Malcolm Smith and Larry Roeseler, Motocross legends Ricky Johnson and Travis Pastrana, drag racers Don Prudhomme and Larry Minor, and legendary SCORE founder and motorsports innovator Mickey Thompson.
This year’s race will commemorate the achievements of legendary desert racers like Rod Hall, Ron Bishop, Johnny Johnson and Larry Roeseler. Hall, with a record 18 class wins (including one overall win in 1972), and Bishop are the only two racers who have competed in all 39 SCORE Baja 1000 races. Hall will be a favorite in the Stock Mini class, while Bishop is once again back where he always has been — racing every year on a motorcycle. Johnson, now retired, had 15 class wins, amazingly in eight different classes. Roeseler, has won 15 times in this race, including 12 overall victories.