Gustavo Vildosola Jr. and Sr. win 2010 Tecate SCORE Baja 1000. It took 42 long years before a Mexican national citizen stood atop the podium in a Score Baja 1000 race, but that historic feat was accomplished this morning at the finish line of the 2010 Tecate SCORE Baja 1000 when Gustavo Vildosola Jr. and Sr. earned the overall victory in La Paz. After coming in a close second back in 2007 during the last peninsula run for the Baja 1000, the Vildosola family was able to take the monkey off their backs and bring home a Baja 1000 victory to an ecstatic crowd of fans. You could hear the relief in Gustavo Vildosola Sr.’s voice.
(For results as displayed by SCORE in the La Paz media center visit Puro Off-Road - Who won here...)

“Well it’s been a long time that we’ve been planning for this,” Vildosola senior said, while a crowd of fans chanted “Mexico! Mexico!” in the background. “It’s one of the most exciting things I’ve ever done. The Baja 1000, it is the granddaddy, and I’ve been trying to win this for a long time, and today was the day. When asked how it felt to earn the historic win with his son, Sr. was beaming with his response.

“It’s just wonderful,” he said. “It’s hard to explain the feelings because we always spend [time] together pre-running, planning the race, just thinking and talking about it, and it’s just great, which I think is very difficult for a kid his age to spend this much time with his dad, and that’s just very special.”
Gustavo Jr., or “Tavo" explained after the race the team's gameplan.
“We started second off the line, which was an amazing starting position, and we were basically going to just see what Roger’s space was and what his plan was for the day and then go form there,” Tavo said. “He had a pretty aggressive pace off the line, and we decided to just sit back and pressure him.”

The Vildosola team, which had Rodrigo Ampudia on the team as a backup but didn’t need to use him and decided to maintain the rhythm of the father-son duo, was able to get past Roger Norman, who was first off the line, after a few hundred miles of racing. Once out front, the Vildosola team never looked back. The stiffest competition for the team later in the race came from Robby Gordon, who finished in second place 22 minutes, and 18 seconds behind the winners.

“We lost GPS and we were running blind, and I just drove it off the road and into the rocks,” Gordon said. “I thought we were going to pull it off with our very first race with Speed Energy, but we just came up a little bit short.”

Roger Norman, who solo-ed the race for the first time, finished in third place to round out the podium. BJ Baldwin, who co-drove with Chad Ragland, finished less than a minute behind Norman in fourth place. Gary Weyhrich, who stayed in the hunt for most of the race, finished fifth in Trophy Truck.

What’s even more impressive about the Vildosola’s win is they edged out motorcycle winners Kendall Norman and Quinn Cody for the fastest overall time by 1 minutes, 30 seconds. Believe it or not, there was also another Mexican national team that won at the Baja 1000 this year, as the 2a ATV of Felipe Velez earned the win ahead of the 1a vehicle of Wayne Matlock. Velez – who rode with teammates Malio Diaz, Carlos Lopez, Maro Gonzales and Stefano Caputo – finished over an hour and a half in front of Matlock and his team riders Harold Goodman, Josh Caster and Wes Miller.

In Class 1, Steven Appleton dominated the competition this year, finishing in seventh place overall. At one point, Appleton looked to have a serious shot at competing for the overall win, and the first-place finish at the 1000 was certainly an impressive ride.

The 43rd running of the Tecate SCORE Baja 1000 is the 18th time the race has finished in La Paz, and 292 official starters according to SCORE officials, this is the third-most entries when a race has finished in La Paz. Of the 43 years of the SCORE Baja 1000, this is the 11th most entries in the race.

Weaving his way through the field and hitting the hammer on the final lap, Jesse Jones jumped over a star-studded field of 30 SCORE Trophy-Trucks Saturday to capture the overall and SCORE Trophy-Truck victory at the 15th Annual SCORE Las Vegas Terrible’s Primm 300 desert race.
Coming from behind, Jones won his second race of the 2010 SCORE season and his second career SCORE Trophy-Truck race win, rambling his No. 76 Ford F-150 SCORE Trophy-Truck to a adjusted winning time of 4 hours 46 minutes, 39 seconds while averaging 57.44 mile per hour over 274.4-miles over the four laps of rugged, rock-strewn Southern Nevada desert course of 68.6 miles each in Primm, Nev., 45 miles south of Las Vegas.

Jones, who owns an Aerospace Engineering firm in Phoenix, started 15th in the star-studded field of 30 starters in SCORE Trophy-Truck in the elapsed-time race, overcoming leader Andy McMillin on the final lap and then holding off the charging team of Robbie Pierce, Santee, Calif./Mike Julson, Alpine, Calif., driving the No. 30 MasterCraft Racing Chevy Silverado, who finished second in and adjusted time of 4:50:08, 3 minutes, 29 seconds behind Jones.
Jones ran his four laps in 1:08:11, 1:14:00, 1:14:15 and ending with a 1:10:13. He now has two wins, one eighth and one 11th-place finish in the four SCORE races so far this season.
Round 4 of the five-race 2010 SCORE Desert Series, featured racers from 15 States and six countries racing on a typically rugged Southern Nevada race
course under brilliantly sunny skies with a light northerly wind and temperatures in the mid 90s.
For the ninth consecutive year, the race was split into two groups with the limited classes running in the morning. SCORE Trophy-Truck division along with the unlimited Class 1 open-wheel class, raced in the afternoon.
The main pits and start/finish area for the 68.6-mile loop course was located on the north side of Buffalo Bills Resort. The race course, which ran again in a counter-clockwise direction, was virtually the same layout as last year, although weather and use had altered the terrain.
"This is just great," reflected Jones at the Buffalo Bill’s finish line area. "We had a really, really great day. We had a flat on lap two and we lost a driveline. It was just dusty and we were fighting our way through the slower traffic. You’re so anxious to go but you know you better not do that because three guys will go by you when you’re changing your tire. The truck ran well. We passed 12 trucks physically so we started 15th and finished third on the road. Andy (McMillin, No. 31) had me by one (minute) on the last lap and I really stepped it up. Andy was down to me by four minutes at the last pit when he pulled in. Oh, man, maybe we’ll get some points out of this thing heading into the SCORE Baja 1000!"

Keeping SCORE Trophy-Trucks from sweeping the podium with their third straight overall in this race was the All German Motorsports unlimited Class 1 winning BMW-powered Jimco open-wheel desert race car driven by Germany’s Armin Schwarz and Martin Christensen of Escondido, Calif. With Schwarz starting and driving the first half of the race and Christensen bringing their car across the finish line in third place overall with a penalty-free elapsed time of 4:51:30, averaging 56.48 mph for their third consecutive Class 1 victory in Primm. (More info on the 2010 Primm 300 here...)
It was the second Class 1 win of the year for Schwarz, a former WRC pilot, and Christensen, a veteran SCORE desert racer who is originally from Denmark.
The stage is now set for the season-ending 43rd anniversary of the legendary Tecate SCORE Baja 1000 desert race to be held November 16-20 in Baja California, Mexico. The world’s most popular desert race will start in Ensenada, Baja California and finish in La Paz, Baja California Sur.
For the 2010 Baja 1000 only: www.baja-1000-live.com A independent Baja 1000 info website for the 2010 peninsula desert race run only. Opening the week after the Primm 300 race.
No worries about the name - it's 100% hoM.O. free!!