SCORE Journal - The Official Publication of SCORE Off-Road Racing
Issue link: http://read.uberflip.com/i/693984
NEARING THE FINISHLINE Because of Mexico's strict law regarding aircraft flying at night, Brock's support plane was grounded until early the next morning. Brock pushed the vehicle and prayed that the 510 would hold together until sunrise. "By some miracle, it did," said Brock. "We even found ourselves with a comfortable lead in the race." With a great start to the morning, the team was stricken with yet another suspension failure close to the finish. This snapped up whatever time they had gained, and after many hours behind the wheel, Brock finally crossed the finish line in third position. While a third place finish was respectable, the bigger accomplishment was that Brock became the first driver to finish, and place in the Mexican 1000 in a Japanese-made import car. "We helped to put Datsun on the map for the youth market, but the victory of finishing the Mexican 1000 became an internal political problem for the automaker," Brock said. "Even though we blew away the faster imports like Saab and other notable cars, Datsun had trouble marketing the achievement in the U.S." Brock went back to road racing again in the United States and his BRE team would go on to win the SCCA Trans Am Championships for Datsun with the 510 in 1971 and '72 with John Morton behind the wheel. Brock returned to Mexico in 1973 and ran both the SCORE Baja 500 and SCORE Baja 1000. Those times, however, were in a Datsun 240Z. "I took Parnelli Jones in that 700 horsepower Big Oly of his on the pavement, but he nearly ran me down in the dirt," Brock said laughing. Because of the 240Z's long front-end and lower seat postion, Brock had trouble seeing out of it on the hills. While it was originally designed as a road car, Brock felt that the 240Z never had the makings of a great off-road desert racer. "It was never as good as the 510 was in the desert," said Brock. Decades after that historic finish, restoration specialist, Les Canaday, discovered Brock's original 510 (photographed at the Petersen Museum) from the Mexican 1000 rusting away in Arizona and immediately contacted Brock. "It was in bad shape," said Brock. "I remember these cars and they were definitely a lot nicer looking in '69." Nevertheless, Brock was able to save a piece of his racing history and it is once again at home in his personal workshop, along with all the awards from that historical day in 1969.SJ EVEN WITH THE MUD, COBWEBS AND RUST, THE ORIGINAL 510 THAT BROCK RAN IN THE MEXICAN 1000 STILL LOOKS AMAZING. 056 SCORE JOURNAL