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The Tecate SCORE Baja 1000 is to motorsports racing as the Super Bowl is to football or the World Series to baseball. It’s an event that breeds champions and heroes and provides a select few a story of a lifetime.
 This year's race will be held November 10-16th and will start for the first time since 1967 in Tijuana, Baja California Norte, Mexico and finish in Cabo San Lucas, Baja California Sur, Mexico. It will be the 40th anniversary of the race shrouded in mystery that continues to lure adventurers from across the globe who share the dream to conquer the Baja.
Over 500 entries, competing in over 30 classes for cars, trucks, motorcycles, ATVs, and the newest class, UTV’s, will be part of this year's odyssey. 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.
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 has also attracted racers from over 40 countries around the world -- 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 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, CA., 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 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.” 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. This year – to mark the 40th anniversary of the running -- will have a parade of cars as was done in 1967. 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 and soon to be headed 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. 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. The famous and not-so-famous have tried their hand at conquering the Baja and they have come from all walks of life. Mark Thatcher, son of Great Britian's then-prime minister Margaret Thatcher, raced in the 1982 SCORE Baja 1000.
 Celebrities James Garner, Ted Nugent, and the late Steve McQueen all battled the Baja in the early 1970s and many racers from other forms of motorsports crossed over to try their skills. Among the drivers from other arenas who have tested the Baja were Champ Car's Rick and Roger Mears, Parnelli Jones, Danny Ongias, Robby Gordon, Jimmy Vasser, Roberto Guerrero and Mike Groff, NASCAR's Brendan Gaughan, world motorcycle champions Malcolm Smith and Larry Roeseler, Motocross legend Rick Johnson, drag racers Don Prudhomme and Larry Minor and legendary SCORE founder and motorsports innovator Mickey Thompson. Recently such names as Jesse James, Patrick Dempsey, famous rally driver Rod Hall, and Olympic downhill ski racer Daron Rahlves have taken on the challenge.  Lured by the same siren that enraptured the Ekins brothers in the 1950s, the Tecate SCORE Baja 1000 remains as the No. 1 target of adventurers the world over, not to mention the cadre of pro and semi-pro desert racers who consider it the fitting climax to their racing season each year.
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