Racers revved up for weekend By MARIO RENTERÍA, Sports Editor
Tuesday, March 6, 2007 11:00 PM PST
PHOTOS PROVIDED BY JOSUE MORALES
El Centro’s Tom Watson and Tim Noe race in last season’s Baja 1000 in Baja California, Mexico in November.
Not even a major change in the race course for this weekend’s SCORE International Off-Road Racing’s Tecate Baja 250 can leave racers in the pits.
The race has a record 394 entries as of Saturday and officials expect it to reach 400, with late registration spanning until Friday.
The record entries came despite the Baja 250 race moving from San Felipe to Ensenada because of a political dispute between land owners and a large development company.
“It amazes me,” said Sal Fish, SCORE chief executive officer and president. “That’s how (off-roaders) are … they’re very cowboyish. They’re mucho-macho people and that’s what this whole thing is about.”
With less than a couple of weeks before the race was to start, SCORE officials received the news they could not hold the race in San Felipe.
“I would say it’s horrendous,” Fish said. “Not only for SCORE International but for the competitors themselves, and all the support teams and spectators that were planning to come down to the sunny side of the peninsula.”
The sudden change in course not only caused frustrations for SCORE officials but racers alike — especially Imperial Valley racers that had already made the pre-run in San Felipe.
“We had every thing pre-planned,” said El Centro resident Tom Watson, who with teammates Tim Noe, also of El Centro, and Gary Arnold of San Diego won the Lite Class in last season’s Baja 1000.
They won the SCORE points championship in their class last season for their third consecutive year.
This season, they finished fourth in their class at the Laughlin Desert Challenge — the first race of the season — in late January.
“We were ready for San Felipe,” Watson said. “Now we’re spending Thursday and Friday heading down (to Ensenada) to start over.”
They’re starting over from finding a hotel to finding crew members.
“We’re doing everything twice … reorganizing our pits,” Watson said. “All the people we had set up to go to San Felipe can’t go to the Pacific side.”
Caleb Gaddis, another local racer, didn’t see the change as much of a factor.
“Mexico is Mexico. We’re happy with going to Ensenada as much as going to San Felipe,” said the El Centro resident, who races in the 1600 class.
This year, Gaddis joined McMillin Racing to race with Dan McMillin in the same class.
“After two years going for a point championship, I wanted to try something a little less stressful,” Gaddis said, “and the opportunity came up.”
The question many racers are asking is whether they’ll be able to race in San Felipe in the future.
“Hopefully, the San Felipe ties (aren’t) broken and we’ll see if we can race there in the future,” Gaddis said.
The answer remains to be seen, but what is known is San Felipe will take a serious financial hit for the course change.
“I also feel the community of San Felipe is also” an innocent bystander, Fish said, “because they are going to take an incredible financial hit. This is going to be real tough on them.”
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