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2007 SCORE Tecate
Baja 500 ATV & UTV Race
June 1-3, 2007 - Ensenada, Mexico
By: Levi Merriman
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Ensenada, Mexico (7/7/2007) –
In the all familiar city of Ensenada Mexico is where the
39th annual Tecate SCORE Baja 500 took place with a record
high 492 entries. Sixty ATV and UTV riders would take
the challenge in hopes of winning their class, but more
importantly becoming one of the few to conquer Baja with
a finish on this year’s course. The course itself
would run a similar line to the earlier Baja 250 ran in
February, with the addition of Mike’s Sky loop that
took the race to over 5000 feet through the mountains
then across the peninsula to racing right on the coast
at Erendria. A new section from Santo Tomas and around
Uruapan with a late course change in the San Telmo loop
to help the racers avoid some severe up hill slit beds
would bring the racers back to Ensenada to finish the
race at just over 420 miles in length.
With the first bike scheduled to leave at 6:00am sharp
and a three hour time gap between the last ATV and the
first Trophy Truck, another change in plans needed to
be made. Instead of the usual 30 second interval between
competitors, that time would be cut in half, and they
would now have only a 15 second gap between them. This
allowed for the massive amount of entries to get started
on the race course almost 2 hours earlier than expected.
I am sure the last class, Sport UTV’s was happy
with the change since they now started in the middle
of the afternoon instead of nearly dusk as anticipated.
The last change that many quad racers found out the
day before was that the Pro ATV’s would now be
allowed to start ahead of the Sportsman motorcycles
giving the Pro’s a huge advantage that they never
had before. This change in the starting order gave the
Pro ATV’s a greater chance of finishing faster
and higher in the overall ranks, although the Sportsman
ATV’s would still remain behind the rest of the
motorcycle field.
With over 400 miles of race course to cover, I was
not able to grab any pictures of the start, rather I
patiently waited 68 miles into the race at a small town
called El Alamo for the first bikes and quads to arrive.
The first ATV through El Alamo was the 3a factory Honda
450R, piloted by Wayne Matlock and Chad Prull at 7:51am.
Less than 30 seconds separated the two front runners
was the 1a Temecula Motorsports Honda 450R of Danny
Prather, Mike Cafro, Levi Marana, and Marc Spaeth were
trying take over the lead. With a three minute interval
the third ATV through was the 2a Temecula Motorsports
Honda hybrid XR650 / 400ex driven by Carmen Cafro, Lance
Schoonmaker, and Earl Thigpen at 7:54am. Fourth to pass
through the silt, and over the first mountain range
was the 14a ALBA\IMS\Roll-design team Honda 450R ridden
by Josh Row, Travis Dillon, Greg Row and Jason Stratton.
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