Scuderia Cameron Glickenhaus's Baja Boot has turned history on its head, beating Ford's Bronco R to the top step of their Baja 1000 class and swapping the order of the racers' predecessors when they first competed 50 years ago. Glickenhaus's V8 reincarnation completed the 800.5-mile route in 33 hours and 59 minutes, with Ford's prototype challenger - the only other Class 2 competitor - stopping some 220 miles earlier due to a parts failure.
Exactly what took the Bronco R, the racing precursor to Ford's upcoming road car, out of the running is yet to be confirmed. Ford revealed that its challenger had been suffering from skid plate damage and a resulting gearbox oil leak, although it's thought a subsequent cooling fan issue is actually what ultimately spelled the racer's demise. Ford was quick to emphasise that the Bronco R's T6 underpinnings and V6 EcoBoost engine, both of which will go into the road car, ran without issue. This despite 2019's race being labelled by some as one of the most gruelling Bajas of recent times thanks to preceding heavy rainfall.
The achievement of Glickenhaus's Boot should not be underestimated because its only rival dropped out, though. The Baja event has always been as much about reliability as speed, with more than half of entries not making it to the end on average. For the Boot to have finished within 34 hours on its first go is worthy of much praise, then, especially when you consider that for others, the event lasted considerably longer. Baja newcomer Jenson Button spent 17 hours stuck in the desert when his trophy truck's differential broke, for instance.
It wasn't all doom and gloom for Ford, however. Fortunes were very different for the race's overall winner, a Raptor trophy truck that finished the whole distance in an astounding 16 hours and 10 minutes. Congratulations to all involved.
[Pic credits: Scuderia Cameron Glickenhaus and Mike Levine]
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