• Discovery | Travel & Learning
• Travel
• Baja 500 Race

Baja 500 Race

One of the harshest tests for man – and machine – is the Baja 500. Every year, the hundreds of drivers the race attracts push themselves and their vehicles over roughly 800 non-stop kilometres across the Baja California desert. It’s madness. The story begins around midnight.

• Rating:
• 
• (0 votes)
• Rate this!
  Rate this!

  Rate this feature

"Which way? Which way?" shouts the driver, Luivan Voelker, as he wipes his face shield and peers into the foggy night. Through the darkness he sees shadowy figures silhouetted against roaring bonfires. Where’s the road he should be on? Why can’t he find any of the direction markers that will tell him where to turn? He can’t use the GPS as it quit working after the water crossing, so he has to rely on the signs – but there aren’t any.

He is trying to find his way to the finish line of the SCORE Baja 500, an annual event that has drawn as many as 438 entrants to the Mexican city of Ensenada in Baja California Norte, the top half of the beautiful and mostly empty Baja peninsula. The number in the title refers to 500 miles (804 kilometres), but the course is sometimes shorter. From Ensenada, where the race starts, our frazzled driver has driven his race car for about 640 kilometres, through brush-covered hills, searingly hot desert, chilly mountains, streams and seemingly endless silt. Then he hit the Pacific coast where fog made it hard to see. Now, within a few kilometres of the finish line he has discovered that the brightly coloured arrows that have been helping him find his way are no longer marking the route. They’ve been taken as souvenirs by race fans, the ones standing around those bonfires. The driver will just have to wing it, and trust the spectators to point out the right road.

Adventure? Guaranteed

"You’ve got to be a little adventurous. You’ve gotta be able to enjoy rolling the dice a little bit – playing with the unknown a little," says Rod Hall, the only racer who’s managed to compete in every Baja 1000 (the big brother of the 500) since the first one in 1967. He’s also raced in most of the Baja 500s and has built up a record number of victories. Since 1970, he has compiled 18 wins in various classes in the Baja 500 – and he has another 18 victories on record in the Baja 1000. The most recent was June this year, when he and his partner, Mike Winkel, took the win in the Stock Mini class in their H3 Hummer. "Baja opens up your eyes so much," says Hall, "and once you get out in the open, you have the complete feeling of freedom."

To prepare, drivers usually spend three or four days in the wilds of Baja, reconnoitering or "pre-running" the racecourse. They drive their off-road vehicles (trucks, bikes, quads, pre-runner buggies) around the racecourse at an easy pace, trying to memorise it, and give their navigators a chance to see it before the going gets gritty. But even though the racers carry GPS units to help them navigate, they have limitations. For one thing, they can quit working if they get wet. Besides that, GPS devices can’t tell the driver if a broken vehicle is parked on the course. They can’t spot a wandering cow either.

Which is why – until they are taken for souvenirs – the entire length of the course will have been marked with arrows, reflective stickers, brightly coloured ribbons, danger warnings and mile markers. It’s hard to get lost, but there are plenty of other things that can happen. "You challenge the desert, the vehicle and your common sense all at the same time," smiles Hall, "and you’re in a competition too – you have to have the desire to win."