SCORE Journal - The Official Publication of SCORE Off-Road Racing
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Vessels and his team," said DeAngelo. "The original tire was two-ply, and the company found out that it was not strong enough. So they developed a three-ply tire. It was a lot stronger, and in 1977, Vessels went racing on it." During the same year, at the SCORE Baja 500, Ivan Stewart, won his class in a Chenoweth buggy equipped with Radial All-Terrain T/A tires. BFGoodrich tires continued with two more victories the following year, winning the 1978 SCORE Baja 500 and SCORE Baja 1000 in Class 8. The launch of a radial off-road tire was big news at the time, as radial tires were thought of as "street" tires, not suitable for any racing application. "The BFGoodrich Radial All-Terrain T/A was the industry's first off- road recreational tire," said Chris Baker, Motorsports Director at BFGoodrich Tire. "Most will tell you that this single product created a general type of tire within the tire business. But it was intentionally focused on off-roading. It was with the involvement in desert racing with SCORE from that time in the mid-seventies, that became the mechanism through which BFGoodrich learned about soft soil mobility, endurance, and off-road traction in general. After 40-plus years, we've gotten a lot better at it." Despite the wins by Vessels, Stewart, and other racers, it was a slow process to get teams to try racing on radial tires. In fact, according to Newsome, it was difficult just to get Vessels to sign off on using the tires in the first place. "It was a very slow process," said Newsome. "Initially, it was a challenge to get Scoop into trying these tires. When he did finally say okay, he bought off on it. As he began to win, he partnered with Bob Gordon which helped get more teams to notice." With Vessels and Gordon entering a variety of races, other teams had begun realizing that the BFGoodrich Radial All-Terrain T/A was holding up to serious punishment. With more development going into making the tires successful, BFGoodrich developed and successfully launched its Radial Mud-Terrain T/A in 1980, offering a more aggressive tire for racers and off-road enthusiasts. "The Radial Mud-Terrain T/A was also D.O.T. approved, and was very successful," said DeAngelo. "Racers now had the option to race on all- terrain or mud-terrain tires." At this time, several teams had already begun running SCORE races on BFGoodrich tires. This resulted in the company's first overall win in 1981, at the SCORE Baja 500, with Malcolm Smith and Bill Newbury. This lead several teams wanting to use the tire from that point forward. "By 1982, we had four to five good-sized teams running on our tires, including Ivan Stewart, Bill Stroppe, Rod Hall, Don Adams, Malcolm Smith, and Johnny Johnson to name a few," said Newsome. DESERT RACING WAS IN THE PITS Although several teams were now running on BFGoodrich tires, there was yet another element to the company's involvement and success in SCORE that occurred in 1982. The company's Pit Program was developed out of a necessity to keep track of teams utilizing the company's tires. But it also became important to many SCORE racers, who at the time couldn't afford to run their own pit crew. "Bob Bower was the new manager of BFGoodrich's off-road program in 1982," said Newsome. "He started the annual task of tracking teams and soon realized that with the size of the budget he was given, it was very overwhelming. He felt that the best way to accomplish all this, and to offset the expenses involved, was to help the racers by providing pit support." Bower's first recruit was Frank DeAngelo, who at the time was the driver of BFGoodrich's tractor trailer. "We came up with the idea and thought we should start pitting with the tractor trailer," said DeAngelo. "To make the program work in the beginning, we pulled people together from BFGoodrich, as well as other teams." Bower and DeAngelo were able to get two people from each of their sponsored race teams in a number of pits along the routes of SCORE races. The two began establishing a network of pit support using anything and anyone they could get. "At one point, we had a truck from racer Don Adams, Scoop Vessel's trailer and a bunch of other vehicles all hobbled together," said Newsome. "By the end of the year, it had grown to be something that really worked. It was driven by a business 012 SCORE JOURNAL