SCORE Journal - The Official Publication of SCORE Off-Road Racing
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A PARTNERSHIP FORGED IN THE DESERT BFGoodrich Tires Celebrates 50 Years Of Racing In Baja Mexico At The 2025 SCORE Baja 1000 By Dan Sanchez Photos by Get Some Photo Fifty years of testing and development in Baja says something about a tire company, especially one that has a history of the most race wins and championships in SCORE International desert racing. Within that time, BFGoodrich Tires has accumulated 34 overall wins at the SCORE Baja 1000, and more than 100 overall wins on the Baja Peninsula. Over the years, BFGoodrich’s relationship and history with SCORE International have been much more than a means to test tires. The company’s engineers, marketing team, and many employees have helped hundreds of people become addicted to desert racing, resulting in the development of numerous SCORE champions along the way. Welcome To Baja The close relationship between SCORE and BFGoodrich began at a time when Baja racing was attracting serious competitors who were building faster vehicles with more capable suspension systems. In 1975, at the suggestion of then SCORE owner Sal Fish, BFGoodrich engineers first set foot on the Mexican Baja Peninsula to see if this race venue would make for good testing grounds. “At that point, we were developing the BFGoodrich Radial All-Terrain T/A when we got hooked up with Sal, who invited us to Baja,” recalled Dan Newsome, former Marketing Manager for BFGoodrich, who started with the company in 1978. “We learned a lot from the experience, so we went back to do more development. A year later, in 1976, BFGoodrich had its first entry at the SCORE Baja 1000 with Fritz Kroyer in a Class 6 Oldsmobile Starfire. Although the company’s first entry into the SCORE Baja 1000 resulted in a DNF, it sparked an enthusiasm within the company, creating the goal of winning the Baja 1000, one they needed to achieve.” During that time, only bias-ply tires were suited for off-road racing and were widely used by race teams. According to ORMHOF inductee Frank DeAngelo, who started with BFGoodrich 48 years ago and was the Executive Director of Motorsports at Jackson Motorsports Group, BFGoodrich was the first to try a DOT-approved radial tire in off-road racing. “After that initial SCORE entry in 1976, the company did more testing with the help of Kroyer and Frank ’Scoop’ Vessels,” 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.” Vessels scored BFGoodrich its first wins in Class 8 during the 1977 Baja 500 and Baja 1000. Race wins on BFG tires began accumulating, with the company’s first overall race win at the 1979 Mexicali 250 with Bob Gordon. 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. “It’s hard to believe we’ve been at it for 50 years now,” said Raymond Cotton, BFGoodrich Motorsports Director. “Back then, BFGoodrich was a pioneer with the Radial All-Terrain T/A tire. It was the first of its kind and put us on the off-road map. It created an entirely new recreational off-road tire category, and our involvement with SCORE in the 70s helped us refine the design and composition, turning the tire into an icon that has evolved into the All-Terrain T/A KO3 tire you can buy today. Some things never change, it’s still proven by winning in Baja.” With racers such as Vessels and Gordon entering a variety of off-road competitions, 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 DOT-approved and 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 convinced several teams 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. In 1986, Mark McMillin notched the first overall Baja 1000 win for BFGoodrich Racing tires on McMillin's famous Macadu buggy. When Desert Racing Was In The Pits Although several teams were now running BFGoodrich tires, there was yet another element to the company’s involvement and success in SCORE that originated in 1979. The BFGoodrich Pit Support Program was developed by ORMHOF Inductee Bob Bower to provide value to BFGoodrich race teams. “At one point, we had a truck from racer Don Adams, Scoop Vessels’ 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 need, but it created something for BFGoodrich internally that we never forgot. We made a lot of teams happy. We quickly realized that if you can enable people to do what they really love to do, your circle of friends gets big really quickly.” “Some of our top teams joined the program and helped us put together a network of pits every 100 miles along the course,” said DeAngelo. “Later on, Dan Newsome took over the pit program, but by that time, some of those original teams that helped out thought the pits were becoming more competitive. So we began contracting other groups to provide pits for us.” “We ended up contracting with organizations, like Spirit Racing, to help us out, but we also had lots of people who wanted to volunteer,” added DeAngelo. “The program grew to the point where we had lots of trucks, trailers, and teams, including Gary Johnson, father of NASCAR driver Jimmie Johnson. We eventually had to move away from teams participating and gathered people who were more specialized in pitting so that it could be done quickly, efficiently, safely, and without any bias.” “BFGoodrich continues to use its tractor-trailers and pit teams, made up of primarily volunteers,” said Nate Hunt, BFGoodrich Racing Program Manager. “They take their vacations to come down and support the pit program, and many have been doing this for decades.” Needless to say, the pit program was very successful – not only for racers but for BFGoodrich as well, as the only requirement to use them was to run the company’s tires. Over the years, many racers, teams, and champions have used BFGoodrich’s Pit Program, including SCORE International’s Roger Norman, who won the overall SCORE Baja 1000 in 2008. “My first involvement with the BFG Pit Program was with my Class 12 car in 1996,” said Norman. “I purchased BFG tires and got free pit service. My wife, Elise, was driving a truck with a trailer, and only had a few parts, not even any spares for the vehicle.” “The development of the BFGoodrich Pit Program was key for SCORE and many teams,” added Norman. “When you’re starting out in desert racing, you don’t know what you’re doing. BFG’s pit program to this day makes it easy and affordable.” Time For a Full-Race-Only Tire As the pit program grew from its beginnings in the early ‘80s, BFGoodrich’s line of off-road tires also grew. The Sport Truck T/A tire debuted in the mid ‘80s; it was the same tire used in Baja racing, with a three-ply design, but had a different tread. With more teams running BFGoodrich tires, it was inevitable that the company would enjoy its first SCORE Baja 1000 overall win, which came in 1986, when Mark McMillin won in a Porsche-powered Chenowth running the Radial All-Terrain T/A tire. This was the first in an unprecedented streak of 20 consecutive Baja 1000 overall victories for BFGoodrich – something no other tire brand has come close to matching. While these victories proved BFG’s tire technology was successful, engineers realized that many of the vehicles were getting faster, heavier, and larger. So the company had to come up with a tougher, more capable tire for SCORE racers. “BFG started developing the Baja T/A, which was going to be its first non-DOT tire,” said DeAngelo. “BFG had never built a non-DOT tire, simply because the slogan at the time was, ‘We Race What We Sell.’” The Baja T/A was developed to be an extremely tough tire, which, according to DeAngelo, had several nicknames, including “Rambo,” during its testing period. The Baja T/A tire led to the 1989 SCORE Baja 1000 overall win by Robby Gordon in a two-wheel-drive Class 8 Jim Venable Ford F-100 pickup. Refining the Race Tire As BFGoodrich was winning races and gaining the respect of the SCORE racing community, the company had been working on improving the race tire even further. “BFG had been focusing on a pure racing tire for the ever-increasing size demands and weight of the Trophy Truck and Class 1 vehicles,” said DeAngelo. “The Baja T/A became the Project T/A and then moved into the Baja T/A KR, which was conceived for the pure racer. The Baja T/A KR was the product platform for BFG’s ambition to continue to win the overall SCORE Baja races.” Soon after, the Baja T/A KR became the preferred racing tire for many SCORE racers and champions. As improvements in racing vehicles demanded larger diameter tires, tougher sidewalls, and more durable tread compounds, BFGoodrich continued modifying and learning more from working with race teams. After 10 years, the brand began testing the Baja T/A KR2, which featured major improvements from the previous version. “It was time to move on from the trusty Baja T/A KR tire,” Hunt said. “While we made improvements over the years, the design was topped out. SCORE Trophy Trucks had evolved so much, and so it was time for a new design. To meet the demands of modern off-road racing, the company shifted from tire survival to delivering punishing performance.” So BFGoodrich went back to work. To illustrate, Hunt retold a story about DeAngelo’s days testing tires in the desert. “There’s a great story from the early days of the KR tire that shows how BFGoodrich refused to settle for ‘good enough,’” Hunt said. “Frank was determined to keep the pressure on the R&D team. When testing showed a tire was tougher than before, Frank would sometimes grab the wheel during a ride-along and steer straight into a rock or ditch — just to see if the tire could really take it. He’d come back and say, ‘Better, but not good enough,’ and send the team back to the drawing board. That actually happened — and who knows how many improved iterations of those tires were created because of it.” The Baja T/A KR2 was eventually launched in 2013 and garnered top-10 Trophy Truck finishes in SCORE races, plus many more in other off-road racing series. According to Matt Hanlon, BFGoodrich race tire designer, the KR2 tire originally launched in a 37-inch diameter size and was initially tested at the 2013 SCORE Baja 500. The 39-inch diameter KR2 was tested at the 2013 SCORE Baja 1000. The KR2 was so successful that BFGoodrich made specific versions for Trophy Trucks, and in 2014, a version was designed specifically for Class 1 racing vehicles. This quickly led to the next generation of the KR family: the Baja T/A KR3 tire. In 2016, Rob MacCachren won the SCORE Baja 1000 for the third year in a row, on the new 40” Baja T/A KR3 tire, which set a new standard in desert racing. “The evolution of the BFGoodrich All-Terrain T/A tire shows how we use the deserts of Baja as our test lab, and how that data, experience, and racer feedback trickles down into tires that consumers can buy,” Hunt said. “Each generation of our all-terrain and mud-terrain tires benefits from what we learn in desert racing — translating high-performance off-road technology into everyday capability.” • Modern race vehicles, like Luke McMillin’s AWD SCORE Trophy Truck, use BFGoodrich’s advanced tire technology to meet the challenges of advanced drivetrains UTV Voices Heard BFGoodrich’s latest milestone is the development of the Baja T/A KR2 SxS tire for UTV racers and the KM3 UTV tire, which is available to consumers. This latest tire development allows an entirely new group of SCORE racers the advantages that Trophy Truck and Class 1 vehicles have experienced from BFG’s long-time experience in desert racing. But it also highlights the fact that although the rugged Baja terrain may stay the same, the speed, vehicle dynamics, and changes in classes will always bring forth new requirements for better and more advanced tires. “It’s part of our ongoing strategy: testing new designs in real-world racing conditions before they’re ready for prime time,” Cotton said. “We’re always learning, refining, and looking for what’s next in tire development for the next generation of off-road racing. We want to work hand in hand with SCORE to grow this sport over the next 50 years.”SJ