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Auto racing is the fastest growing professional sport in North America. Already one of the three most attended spectator sports events, motor sport boasts extensive live coverage and soaring national and international audiences.

The Baja 1000
The Baja 1000 off-road race is a truly historic event. It's the oldest and most well-known of all the off-road races. Since 1967, the grand daddy of all desert races has been run over the treacherous and often mysterious Baja California peninsula.

The Baja 1000 has attracted the world's most adventurous racers as entries have come from every state in the U.S., and dozens of other countries, including Canada, England, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, South Africa and Spain, as well as the event's host country Mexico.

The first recognized record run down the Baja peninsula occurred in 1962. Dave "Bud" Ekins and Bill Robertson Jr. timed their trip from Tijuana to La Paz on a pair of Honda 250 motorcycles. Ekins made it in 39 hours, 54 minutes, Robertson was less than an hour behind. There were no official timers like today, so to establish proof of the time, the two men had pieces of paper time-stamped in the Tijuana telegraph office and then had the papers time-stamped again at the telegraph office when they arrived in La Paz.

Chevrolet decided to get in on the action and commissioned race car builder Bill Stroppe to create a few trucks for a run to La Paz. Later in the year, the group of trucks left Long Beach, California, and all of them safely reached La Paz. The run wasn't officially timed, but the advertising and publicity campaigns produced around the feat by Chevrolet called the run, "the roughest under the sun." Thus was born the concept of racing the length of the Baja peninsula.

Notable names that have gone on to the starting lists of Baja 1000 races: James Garner, Ted Nugent, and Steve McQueen tried their hand at the Baja 1000 in the early 1970s. Rick and Roger Mears, Parnelli Jones, Danny Ongais, Robby Gordon, Rod Hall, Malcolm Smith, Don Prudhomme, Larry Minor and Mickey Thompson are race car drivers that at one time or another drove in the most famous off-road race of all.