Due to a Tropical Storm named Bud, the 2018 running of the Coyote 300 off-road race in Baja is postponed until this weekend.
After sizing up the weather forecast, and considering recommendations from local officials, organizers of this year’s Coyote 300 moved the event forward by seven days. Competition will now be held on Sunday, June 24th, with mechanical review a day prior.
An event well-liked by racers in the area, the Coyote 300 runs as an off-road race in and around La Paz on the Baja California peninsula. This is its twenty-fourth running. Last year, just over 120 off-road machines and more than 40 bikers signed up for the event.
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With hard conditions found along the roughly 300km route, last year’s drivers took the green flag in Salida and headed for the peninsula’s west coast before tearing down the shoreline, across the interior, and finishing the race in El Tecolote. This year, competitors will take off from Todos Santos.
Bikes will be waved off starting at 7:00am local time, while off-road cars and trucks will be shown the green flag two hours later. Checkpoints will be found along the way including at kilometre 95 in La Trinidad, kilometre 190 in Conq.Agraria, and kilometre 284 in Las Cruces just outside the finish line. There are other checkpoints along the way as well.
The machine in this story’s lead image appears in a video of the Coyote 300 uploaded to YouTube, available here. Past winners finished the course in as little as 3.5 hours, with other competitors taking as long as six hours depending on their off-road machine of choice.
This race is a single loop challenge like some other events but isn’t part of nor does it have affiliation with the SCORE season, a four-race card which includes the San Felipe 250, Baja 500, Desert Challenge, and the mighty Baja 1000. The Coyote 300 does count major companies like Quaker State amongst its sponsors.