Yes, the Baja 1000 somehow managed to happen once again, this one, the last of the 1900s. Of course, all of the talk is/was about the huge thing coming up next year, the Baja 2000.

Maybe that's why SCORE, the people who put on the event, gave the racers what appeared to many, as a half-hearted effort. It was almost as if they were saying: "Let's get this one out of the way, so we can start preparing for the Big Deal next year!"

Consider: the 1999 running of the race was less than 700 miles in length and ran two loops on the same course. This made for a beat-up course by the second loop, and certainly did not provide a great deal of variety.

Part of the mystique about the 1000, is the grandeur of the event. You go a thousand miles, the length of the Baja peninsula. Even when it's a loop race, rather than a point to point event, the racers dive deep into the lesser traveled regions of Baja. And when they race from Ensenada to La Paz, there's a certain mad purity to the event. You HAVE DONE IT!

Racers and racer followers alike understand the magnitude of the 1000. Sadly, the people who run the event just might not share this feeling.

Indeed, however, this year the race turned out to be a genuine test and a real destroyer of machines and egos. It pounded, pummeled and ground many of the racers into submission. It squared wheels, cooked motors, smoked trannys, snapped CV-joints, ripped cross-members off, tweaked steel tubing like licorice sticks, turned expensive glass fenders into hairy pieces of scrap, blew seals on shocks, ripped chunks of rubber from expensive racing tires and converted many and varied fluids into vapor, as temperatures wandered into uncharted zones.

Tough? Plenty tough.

But not for one man.

Taking away all of suspense right up front, Larry Ragland simply put his big Chevy into "Drive" and comfortably cruised to victory.

For the fifth time. And for the fourth time in a very old, very stout Chevy truck. Little did Nelson and Nelson think that when they built this beast, that it would have such a glorious racing history.Taking nothing away from the win, Ragland had some lucky early-race incidents to help him win the Trophy-Truck division and snare the overall four-wheeled win in the 32nd running of the legendary desert race.

The Iron Hombre! Ivan fought valiantly to regain lost ground, but an inopportune course blockage early in the race put Ragland well out of the iron reach.

A field of 237 entries, competed in 23 classes for cars, trucks, motorcycles and ATVs, over a 672.6 mile course, consisting two laps over a 336.3-mile loop.

Ragland covered the horribly dusty course in14 hours, 26 minutes, 36 seconds, averaging 46.57 miles per hour, to earn his fourth yictory in the last five years. In last year's race, which went from Ensenada to La Paz, Ragland finished second, just five minutes behind Ivan Stewart.

It must have been sweet for Ragland to make up for that 300 second hole in his racing life of last year. This year, Stewart, placed third in his Toyota Tundra, behind Ragland and the Chevrolet 4X4 of Larry Roeseler. Roeseler ran a time of 14:40:33, while Stewart was timed in 14:49:48.

Ragland readily admited that luck helped play a part in his win: "We got some breaks to get the lead physically within the first 20 miles and after that, our Vortec Chevrolet was absolutely flawless. Once we had the big lead of nearly 20 minutes, we paced ourself until Roeseler closed the gap to about nine minutes Then we just stepped it up again to stay comfortably ahead."

That bottleneck was a nightmare for all those who got there after Ragland got past that point. Mark post broke down and blocked the course at mile 39, causing Stewart, Robby Gordon, Herbst and many others to stack up behind the stuck vehicle and simply sit there and watch, as Larry Ragland put the hammer down and build up a huge lead. The frustration must have been maddening for all those hard-chargers. We were told that drivers who tried to get around the stuck vehicle blocking the course, got hung up in trees, or slipped down the side of a nasty ravine.

While Ragland smoked all the cars and trucks, Johnny Campbell, San Clemente, Calif., and Tim Staab, Pacific Beach, Calif., rode a new Honda XR650 motorcycle to the overall and Class 22 victory. Campbell/Staab completed the course in a winning time of 14:15:42, averaging 47.16mph.

For Campbell, it was his third straight victory in the Baja 1000, also teaming up with Staab in 1997. Honda's all-new XR650Rs performed flawlessly, bringing their riders home first and second. This was Honda's 10th overall win in the Mexican race. The second team of Jonah Street, Torsten Bostrom and Greg Bringle, came home second motorcycle on their XR650R about 11 minutes back, and just 14 seconds behind the first Trophy Truck of Larry Ragland. In fact, Honda riders made it 1-2-3-4 in the motorcycle class. Campbell's win meant he also won the six-race Laughlin/SCORE International Desert Series.

The course was made for the much more nimble bikes, as it had not yet recovered from the Baja 500 event in June, and because of a lot of pre-running by competitors, the course was diabolically rough, dry and beat up, making visibility almost zero at night. Moreover, there were no ultra-high-speed dry lake bed sections, with large sections of the course instead winding through Baja's pine forests.

"This was a more technical Baja race," said winner Campbell, "a lot of turning, twisting through the trees. We only averaged 47.1 miles an hour." On top of that, a two-loop course meant there would be lots of traffic for the leaders to contend with at night.

When Campbell took the checkered flag, there were still many competitors heading out for their second lap. Riders were waved off at the start in 30-second intervals, and Campbell started second, behind Honda rider, Ricardo Malo.

"I had a decent start position," Campbell said, "and only had to pass one guy and got by him around the 25-mile mark. I just tried to ride consistently. My arms were pumping a little bit because it was a little bit shadowy and hard to see in the morning. And cold, because the first 15 miles were pretty wide-open, and the wind chill goes up when you're going 90 mph. After that, I just tried to be smooth and consistent and get the bike to Tim."

Jonah Street started sixth and quickly worked his way up into second, turning it into a duel between the two XR650R teams. Even so, the Campbell/Staab duo was never headed, although the Street/Bostrom/Bringle team did get to within 6.5 minutes at the halfway point. Campbell's and Staab's winning time was 14 hours 15 minutes and 42 seconds.

Johnny Campbell They came, they saw, they kicked some ...well, you know... With it's all new 650's making their Mexican debut, Johnny, Tim Stabb, and Team Honda will enter the next millenium as the team to beat!

Although it was essentially a wire-to-wire win, the teams did have to overcome some unexpected challenges. During Staab's daytime stint on the bike (Staab rode the daytime sections, and Campbell started and rode the night sections) he fell at low-speed in some rocks and stalled the bike.

"The air filter was plugged up and the bike was really rich and it wouldn't start," Staab said. "It was probably only 3 or 4 minutes, but it felt like an hour to me." Campbell also fell as he was heading to victory during his last leg, getting crossed up on a rain rut and going down, but he and the bike were unhurt.

The second-place team also suffered a crash, when Jonah Street was on his first lap through the pine forests. "I was chasing a slower rider, and I came up on him in the dust thinking that I could just swoop right around him," Street said. "And when I got on him, I found that I was looking straight at the tailgate of a truck doing five miles an hour. I just yarded it off into the weeds; there was nothing else I could do. But I'm OK and so's the bike. It was really hard to go fast after that for a couple of miles, but I shook it off."

"The bike worked flawlessly," Campbell said at the finish. "The toughest part was dicing with cars in the last section before the finish, coming back into Ojos Negros. At one point, a car held me up for about 10 miles. It was a little hairy, because I could barely see my front fender. It was like driving in the fog. But we got through clean; clean enough to win the thing"

It was a sweet victory for the team, and Campbell was so pumped up after bringing the bike home to the checkered flag, he said, "Want to do another loop?"

We heard a radio report about a guy who repeatedly landed a chopper in the dirt at Santo Tomas. The resulting dirt cloud was so bad highway traffic was forced to come to a complete stop.

A badly spooked ATV rider came into the Camalu checkpoint with a hole in his engine cases from a piece of reebar that was imbedded in the course. A booby trap or just trash on the trail? No one knew for sure.

The Class 1 car of Glen Greer (#108) broke a uniball on the rear trailing arm and the rearward movement ripped out the axle and damaged the CV. They were about race mile 200 or so. They paid some locals big $$$ to be pulled out. It would have been nearly impossible to go backwards on the course to get to them.

About a half-hour after the start, BFG Air announced that "A booby trap is being built between race mile 41 and 42." It was also heard that Valle de Trinidad was flooded intentionally before/during the second lap.

Doug Fortin Jr. Doug Fortin was leading Class 1 about 80 miles before the finish, but had problems and was forced to settle for fourth in class with the SCAT-powered buggy.

Lovely Bekki Freeman won Class 1600. Most of the guys in Baja are in love with her. And, oddly enough, she’s fast enough to beat most of the guys in Baja.

Weather was great during the day, but got very cold at night.

Bikes rolled off the line at 7:00am-'ish, with the 4-wheeled vehicles leaving at 9:00am.

A bike (no number known) rider suffered a broken collar bone around 10:00 AM, and the evacuation procedures were very long because of the logistics.

At 10:40 in the morning, we heard a radio report about Jeff Lewis (#700 Chevy S-10) upside down. He did not finish, which after a major flip, was no surprise.

As the radio crackled, we heard that Kreg Donahoe (#17 Trophy Truck) was out with a blown motor, and that Mike Lorenzi (#1612) was on its side. It seemed that there were more incidents like this than in a "normal" Baja 1000.

The area between race mile 38-41 must have been a rough one, as another report came in about four cars broken down in that spot.

Car #115, the John Herder Toyota/Jimco, broke a steering rod shortly after noon.

Ivan Stewart rolled in the San Vincente pits with his right rear tire flat and balled up around the axle and brakes. The PPI crew worked like demons to get the tangled up mess cleared and slapped on a fresh wheel. More time lost for the frustrated Ironman.

Phillip Moulton, in a venerable, tired old 1970 Bronco (#301) was down for a long time at El Alamo with a broken axle yoke and heavy damage from contact with another vehicle.

The radio kept up its pace of reports, with the driver of #1099x suffering a broken knee at El Alamo and a mention of #251 possibly getting disqualified for allegedly cruising through an off-limits tomato field.

Duralast F-150. The guy(s) who designed the 32 valve engine in the Ashley/Smith truck must have been just a little "concerned", as the radical Ford engine blew up near Km77 on the second lap.

Speaking of booby traps, there was an "enhanced" v-shaped rut in the road after the pebble beach in Erindera. Dave Sundquist (Class 10) smacked it bad and put the a-arm into his lower leg.

Robby Gordon had a load of problems at this year's 1000. Beside his down time (reason unknown), he had an accident at checkpoint #4 on the first lap. For whatever reason, he failed to stop in time and crashed into the back of a class 10 car that was stopped at the checkpoint to receive their stub ticket. No one was injured, but the check crew did have to jump for safety. Gordon was unable to attend the CRB and sent a note of apology, offering to pay for any damages. In a unanimous vote he was DQ'ed for unsafe driving that endangered the checkpoint personnel.

Robby Gordon. For the second straight year, the Baja 1000 has taken it's share of "payback" out of Robby Gordon's hide. Could it be that the curse of Green race vehicles applies to desert racing too?

From the SCORE Competition Review Board on the Robby Gordon incident, we have the following: "At approximately 4:00 PM on 11/05/99 during the running of the Baja 1000, while stopped at Checkpoint #4 obtaining my stub ticket, our race vehicle was hit very hard from behind and on the right side by the Turtle Wax, Trophy Truck #15, driven by Robby Gordon, who in my estimate was traveling at an excessive speed, (approx. 40 - 50 MPH) for a checkpoint corridor. My race vehicle was trust forward and to the left very violently, knocking at least one Checkpoint worker to the ground and sent another running for his life."

Andrew Myers was driving the single seat car at the time of this incident and he related the same information to the Board, adding that conditions were "not dusty" and the light was good. He was not injured in the collision and no reports of injuries to checkpoint workers were received by SCORE officials. Andrew was able to continue his race, but about 30 miles later, the damages sustained in the collision ended the Myers' race day. They had been third in the race and third in points.

Gordon was not present to answer questions from the Board. and in a unanimous decision (5-0), the protest was upheld and Robby's entry was disqualified.

It should be noted that Robby did stop and speak to Andrew immediately after the incident and that he stopped at the Ojos Negros start/finish before beginning his second lap to inform Sal Fish of the incident. Also, Robby sent a note to the CRB Marshal apologizing for both the accident and his inability to appear before the Board. He also offered to pay for damages to the Myers' vehicle.

Rob Reinertsons Stock Mini Ranger exploded a front rotor, had a rear drum fall apart, break off a pitman arm, got a flat, and blew up the motor. Not a good day, but he at least got to mile 250.

Ed & Troy Herbst The Herbst brothers frnished fourth overall in the Trophy Truck class in their Ford 150, to earn their first season championship in 20 years of desert racing. Troy Herbst, the youngest member of the Las Vegas racing family, won the unlimited Class 1 division and finished fifth overall in his Ford-powered Smithbuilt race car. His win clinched his third consecutive Class 1 season championship.

The only pro female racer in the event - Bekki Freeman - made it to the finish line. Bekki won for the second straight year in a Jimco Class 1-2/1600. Freeman's victory, however, left her a mere eight point short of defending her season title. Vic Bruckmann and Jason Hatz finished second to earn their first title Class ½-1600 title..

In a drama played out well back in the field of 215 official starters, Tim Casey, with driving help from brothers Al and Frank Arciero Jr., won the Stock Mini class by completing one of the two laps of the course in a new Daewoo Korando sports utility vehicle from Korea that was being seen in North America for the first time.

A rumor was circulating that the Team Herzog did some major road blocking for Ragland, against Roeseler, with the Stewart Protruck. Roeseler was pissed and after he found out who it was, he followed them into their pit, let them know of his displeasure, and then promptly wasted their entire pit with mucho horsepower and roosted everything.

"We went out to finish recovering our car #108 (Glen Greer car). While attempting to get our east side chase to come in and pull him out, the race car reported that some locals in a pickup truck were bringing him in (from race mile 222 to San Vicente at race mile 239). Apparently, once the strap was hooked up, the pickup towed our car down the race course as fast as it could (guessing about 50mph).

In the process, it encountered a large hole, causing severe bending of the pickup truck rear bumper and nearly launching the race car into the back of the pickup bed. The buggy driver was unsure of the local’s disposition and requested us to intercept. We got in close enough to witness the high speed towing on the race course. A $100 bill was given to the locals, who then requested another 50 and told em … no. After completing towing our car to the pit trailer, we assisted a fellow Tucson racer (#1004) with a refuel and co-driver swap.

We then proceeded to Yurapan and remained there until 0330, and we got to see Johnny Campbell scream through leading on the second lap. It seemed for every car that went past us, one went down the highway on a tow strap. The Candyman (Walter Prince in a Sportsman buggy) went by, tossing candy canes to the local youngsters.

LAST THOUGHTS

When the ORC team got back to their base in Rosarito, tired, covered with dust, smelling like wet goats and badly in need of sleep, we sat down for a while, sipped some suds and talked the event over. From all the input we received over those long hours, the bottom line was that this race will surely go down in the books as one of the most brutal ever. No rain. No terrible winds. No fog to fight. Just the unforgiving Baja terrain.

And when congested traffic is added to this, one must wonder about the wisdom of putting a large number of vehicles on a course with so many narrow spots. If there had not been a horrible bottleneck so early in the course, we might have seen a truly great race between Ragland, Roeseler and Ivan Stewart. As it turned out, the drama was defused. Much like a Tyson fight.

Designing an off-road race course is said to be an art. When you consider that many strong running vehicles simply could not make it to the finish line within the madated 24 hour limit, one must concede that it was simply bad art. Still, like Homer Simpson once said: "I’d rather go to a bad football game than a good opera."

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