Wednesday, May 4, 2005 | 9:34 a.m.
Brian Hilderbrand covers motor sports for the Las Vegas Sun. His motor sports notebook appears Friday. He can be reached at [email protected] or (702) 259-4089.
Despite struggling this season in his second stint as an owner/driver in the NASCAR Nextel Cup Series, Robby Gordon has filed an entry to race his Trophy Truck in next month's Tecate SCORE Baja 500 desert race in Ensenada, Mexico.
The 500-mile off-road adventure is scheduled to take the green flag Saturday morning, June 4, and is being held on the same weekend as a Nextel Cup Series race in Dover, Del.
This will mark the second time in seven months that Gordon has attempted to run an off-road race and a Nextel Cup race on the same weekend. Last November, while he still was driving for Richard Childress Racing, Gordon drove the first 740 miles of the Baja 1000 before jetting to Homestead, Fla., for the Cup season finale.
In the Baja 1000, Gordon had built a lead of more than a half an hour in his Red Bull Chevy CK1500 Trophy Truck before handing off the truck to co-driver Steve Barlow. Barlow later developed mechanical troubles and was stranded in the desert for more than 12 hours because the team's chase crew got lost. Barlow eventually finished the race in 12th place, more than 13 hours behind class winners Mark Miller and Ryan Arciero.
Gordon, who began his racing career in the deserts of Southern California, Southern Nevada and Mexico, is a three-time Class 8 winner in the Baja 500 (1988-90) and a two-time overall winner in the car and truck classes.
Gordon has yet to duplicate that kind of success on the NASCAR circuit, where he has failed to qualify for three of the nine Cup races this season and is 39th in points. His best finish this season is 20th at Martinsville Speedway in April.
BAJA ENTRIES: SCORE International, which sanctions the Baja 500, already has received 264 entries for next month's race, including an event-record 26 in the featured Trophy Truck class. SCORE officials anticipate more than 300 vehicles will take the green flag on race day.
Southern California racers Chad McNeil (Trophy Truck), Lee Patten (Class 1) and Steve Thompson (Motorcycle) drew the pole positions for their respective classes during Saturday night's live draw at Irwindale (Calif.) Speedway.
Among the 267 pre-entries are 24 racers from Southern Nevada.
BEST IN THE DESERT: Las Vegas racers Pat Dean and Brian Collins tuned up for the Baja 500 by winning their respective classes in the Best in the Desert Racing Association's Terrible's Town 250 desert race Saturday.
Dean won the Class 1500 and car/truck overall titles in 4:02:40 while Collins won Class 1400 and was sixth overall in 4:11:09. Dean will compete in Class 1 and Collins in Trophy Truck in the SCORE-sanctioned Baja 500.
TERRIBLE'S CUP: SCORE International has received 84 official entries for the SCORE Las Vegas Terrible's Cup I, a limited-field short-course race to be held July 29-30 at the dirt track at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.
As of Monday, SCORE had received 20 entries in Class 1-2/1600, 20 in the combined SCORE Lite/Class 1 division and 16 in both Trophy Truck and Class 1.
The race will be held on a specially constructed 1.5-mile track that incorporates the infield of the half-mile dirt track. SCORE officials claim that nearly 90 percent of the track can be seen from the grandstands of the 8,000-seat facility.
For additional information on the event, or to purchase tickets, visit www.scorelasvegas.com.
SCORE ON TV: An announcement is expected within a week that the SCORE Baja 500 and inaugural Las Vegas Terrible's Cup race at Las Vegas Motor Speedway will be nationally televised on a delayed basis.
Aura 360, the Maine production and marketing company that holds this year's SCORE television rights, is expected to announce that the two races will be shown on the Outdoor Life Network.
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