SCORE’S SAN FELIPE BAJA 250
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New Trophy Truck Winner - Mark Post and Rob MacChacaren |
TROPHY TRUCK RESULTS NOTE:Unofficial Trophy Truck results posted at the San Nicolas Hotel in Ensenada listed Mark Post #3 as 6th Place. SCORE has reviewed the facts surrounding a police detainment of the Post race vehicle. This detainment occurred just prior to and within full view of the timed finish line in Santo Tomas. The detainment was witnessed by a senior SCORE official. The detainment was not race related. Mark Post did not violate any SCORE mandated highway rules on any of the six highway sections. The official results have been recalculated to account for the 4 minutes and 33 second detainment and this moves Mark Post to his correct finishing position of 1st Place in class.
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Thanks to some Machiavellian politics in the San Felipe area, the 2007 SCORE San Felipe 250 was switched to the Ensenada area about ten days before its start date.
The Mayor of Ensenada, Cesar Mancillas Amador, was not even in the country when the crisis occurred, yet he responded expeditiously to smooth the move to the west side of the peninsula. While racers frantically cancelled San Felipe hotel reservations and made new ones in Ensenada, the mayor organized space for the contingency festivities, a start line off Avenida Ruiz and all the necessary arrangements for street closures and extra police. Ensenada’s hotels and restaurants were delighted to have another influx of racers on the calendar.
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Meanwhile, SCORE’s CEO, Sal Fish, drew on years of experience in Baja, to line up a 216 mile course. He put together a beauty. It wound from Ensenada’s outskirts to Ojos Negros, south through El Alamo and then to Valle de Trinidad. From there the racers dropped westward and down out of the hills to the beach below Erendira. The old familiar road brought them up to the hills behind Santo Tomas, 29 miles south of Ensenada, and that’s where they finished. The soccer field just south of town was pressed into service for the ceremonial finish, but the actual timing stopped as the drivers hit the bottom of the hill about a mile away.
A big field of about 330 entries was fattened to a record for this event, at 393, by an influx of nearly 60 late entrants who apparently liked the idea of racing out of Ensenada rather than San Felipe.
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#19 Tim Herbst was first vehicle accross the FINISH |
The racing was intense, and close. At the finish it was impossible to tell whether Alan Pflueger, Tim Herbst or B. J. Baldwin had the win in the Trophy Truck class. Pflueger, in a Chevy, took the gold, with an eight second edge over Herbst, in a Ford, who in turn, had six seconds on Baldwin in another Chevy.
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#28 TT Alan Pflueger was un-official winner until recall on 3/12 |
In the hunt for the Trophy Truck win on the road, Mark Post had a scary end to his afternoon, when an over-eager Federale apparently felt Post had done something wrong. Post came down off the last hill and found himself face-to-face with the business end of the Federale’s weapon. He was told to exit his race truck, and loaded into a police car, which then headed for the closest jail. SCORE’s lawyer, Oscar Ramos, was pressed into service, and thanks to the race team’s own video of the entire event, including whatever had first ticked off the cop, it was determined that Post hadn’t done anything wrong, and he was released. Still, he’d lost his chance for the win, although he and co-driver, Rob MacCachren, did get a sixth place.
Bikers Robby Bell and Kendall Norman, on a Honda, were the overall winners, with a time of 3:52:31. Pflueger, who ran without brakes for most of the second half of the race, timed in at 4:04:57.
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Class 1 win - Larry Roeseler in Terrible Herbst Truggy |
The winner in Class 1 was Larry Roeseler, in Troy Herbst’s Ford powered Truggy. Troy, still recovering from his last year’s leg injury, sat this one out. Roeseler had some fuel pressure issues, but nothing major interrupted his day.
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Class 10 win - Lobsam Yee |
Class 10 went to Lobsam Yee, in his Honda Jimco, after a good battle with Chris Harrold in a Honda Alumi-Craft.
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SCORE Lite win - Mike Williams |
SCORE Lite was won by Mike Williams in a MECO, while Cameron Steele and Kash Vessels took second in their Desert Assassin. Vessels did most of the driving, while Steele finally got his three-pronged race effort to work. He started the morning on a motorcycle, then drove back to the start line and started again, in his Trophy Truck. He got that to the finish line in 11th place, hopped out and went back to the tail end of the course to meet Vessels, so he could then also finish the SCORE Lite car. His bike finished also, but not his brother, Grant, who broke his leg.
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Class 8 win - Nick, Larry and Mike Vandeway |
The Class 8 truck win went to the Vanderwey brothers, Nick, Larry and Mike, whose GMC Sierra ran the course in four hours and 44 minutes flat.
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1-2/1600 win - Daniel McMillin and Caleb Gaddis |
In 1-2/1600 the new team of Daniel McMillin and Caleb Gaddis, in a Jimco, won by a margin of six minutes.
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Class 7 win - Perry McNeil and Sergio Silva |
There was dust, and passing was difficult on much of the course, but what seemed to take the biggest toll was overdriving the corners on the road along the beach or coming in to Santo Tomas. Over and over again we were told about drivers rolling over because they’d overcooked it into a turn. Gus Vildosola, Sr. was one of those, rolling his Trophy Truck about three miles before the finish.
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| Pro ATV win - Danny Prather and Mike Cafro |
Tom Ridings put his Class 1 car on its lid, and Dave Caspino, in a 1600 car, flew off “a 200 foot cliff”, after ignoring a lady with a sign that said “slow down.” Possibly the scariest off-course excursion was by Jesse Jones who overshot a turn and dropped off a twenty foot cliff onto the beach at the edge of the surf. He was not injured, but it seems his 2006 run of bad luck hasn’t yet come to an end. A team of folks got together to get his truck back on its wheels, and then a local’s back hoe was pressed into service to create a ramp so it could be maneuvered back up the 20 feet and onto firm ground.
Brakes were a big issue for this race, in all classes, and over-driving the turns contributed to a lot of bad days. On the whole the racers were enthusiastic about the event, many commenting that they were not missing all the “whoops and rocks” of the San Felipe course.
SCORE’s next event will be the Tecate SCORE Baja 500 starting in Ensenada, Baja California June 1-3.
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