Columnist Brian Hilderbrand: Robby Gordon looks forward to Baja

Wednesday, Nov. 10, 2004 | 10:08 a.m.

Brian Hilderbrand covers motor sports for the Las Vegas Sun. His motor sports notebook appears Friday. He can be reached at bh@lasvegassun.com or (702) 259-4089.

The final week of the NASCAR Nextel Cup season will be a hectic one for Robby Gordon.

After completing 500 miles (hopefully) in Sunday's Mountain Dew Southern 500 at Darlington Raceway, Gordon will hop on his private plane and fly to Ensenada, Mexico, and compete in the first half of the 37th annual Tecate SCORE Baja 1000 desert race, which starts Thursday morning, Nov. 18.

After driving for 8 hours in his No. 31 Red Bull Trophy Truck down the Baja California peninsula, Gordon will turn the wheel over to co-driver Steve Barlow, hop back on his plane and fly to Southern Florida, where he is to compete in the NASCAR Busch Series and Nextel Cup Series season finales at Homestead-Miami Speedway.

"Why do it?" Gordon said, repeating a reporter's question. "Because I can, because I have an airplane, because we have sponsors and it's not going to hurt our effort in Miami at all -- I'll be there in time for the first practice (Friday morning).

"I'm probably going to run about 500 to 700 miles (in the Baja 1000) and we'll see what time looks like. If time looks good -- we're going to average 70 miles an hour for the first 500 miles, so if we start at 10 o'clock, we'll be out of the truck by 7 or 8 o'clock and it won't be a big deal."

Gordon, who began his racing career in the deserts of Southern California, Southern Nevada and Mexico before progressing to Indy cars and then NASCAR, said his decision to drive in the Baja 1000 this year was driven by two factors.

"First of all, I love the Baja 1000," Gordon said. "And, Baja is something I've always done and I haven't won it in a while. I've won it twice and hopefully this will be the year for number three."

Gordon won his first Baja 1000 while co-driving with his father, Bob, in Class 2 in 1987 and then won it driving solo in 1989 in Class 8. He said he is confident the SCORE Trophy Truck he has prepared for this year's event is capable of winning the 1,016.3-mile race.

"We built a new Chevrolet (CK-1500) last year and it's going to be one year old and that's about when my old trucks always came to life -- about year one," Gordon said. "Unfortunately, I always sold trucks before I had the other ones completely developed and now I've got this thing developed and we've got our chase crews ready and my people are ready."

Gordon, who is leaving Richard Childress Racing at the end of this season to start his own Nextel Cup team, said he has no plans to give up desert racing despite the demands of being an owner/driver in the highly competitive NASCAR series.

In addition to his NASCAR efforts in both the Nextel Cup and Busch series, Gordon said he would drive in the Dakar rally (formerly Paris to Dakar) in January, compete in the Indianapolis 500 next May and campaign his Trophy Truck on a full-time basis in the 2005 SCORE Desert Series. Gordon said he has talked with motocross star Travis Pastrana, among others, about driving the Trophy Truck in 2005.

"As a race team owner, as we grow, I would like to actually run the Trophy Truck with somebody in it next year; maybe the guy that's going to drive with me in Baja, Steve Barlow, or maybe a guy like Travis Pastrana," Gordon said.

"We've been looking at all our options ... but I'd like to run that full-time next year and run the car for a championship and maybe I'll just go and help out at Baja."

One event Gordon said he likely would miss next year is the inaugural SCORE Las Vegas Terrible's Cup I in July at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. Although the event is being held on an off-weekend for the Nextel Cup Series, Gordon said he didn't think the stadium race would fit into his schedule.

"I don't know if we'll be able to do it or not," he said. "We'll sit and look at the schedule and see how it works out, but I'll have a full plate. Our first year, we'll do an Indy 500 program, we'll do the Cup and Busch programs and we'll also do an off-road program.

"The truck may show up there in Vegas, I just may not be in it."