1. Let’s start easy.

Get acquainted by watching a Baja race on TV. This Saturday, June 1^st, 2019 the San Felipe 250 will air on ABC's "World of X Games" at 2:30 p.m. ET / 1:30 p.m. PT. I’ve seen a preview and I can’t wait to see more…some spectacular coverage!

2. Getting the bug and want more?

Watch the full feature movie Dust to Glory by Dana Brown.

3. If you want to go to a Baja race

first, make a plan. The Baja 500 is actually running this week starting Saturday in Ensenada. Understand it’ll never turn out the way you expect but it’ll give you a structure to start!  There’s a common saying mentioned frequently when nothing goes as planned in Baja (and it never does)… “That’s Baja!” We still have the race logs and maps we created when we raced in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s. Be prepared but most of all be flexible.

4. Choose the “right spot” to watch the race:

This is an easy yet difficult task in Baja because there’s 1000 miles of road to choose from. Once the field goes past there’s little chance of ever seeing them again, so get comfortable and relax. One of my favorite locations is the “Rollers” just outside of Ojos Negros. Hardcore fans will have been there since the day before the start, selecting their spot and partying as only they can in Mexico. You’ll know when the Trophy Trucks are coming as their support helicopters will appear first in the distance. Within a couple of hours, the entire field will have passed and, essentially, it’s over; but you’ll never forget the day. There are literally hundreds of such places all along the course, so be sure to look at the course maps.

5. Determine a meeting point so if all fails,

you know where to go to get back with your group. Gayle and I got separated while covering the Baja 1000 in 2004. I was shooting from a helicopter and she from the ground. She was to drive to a specific helicopter refueling location to pick me up when my stint in the chopper was over. She got there but I wasn’t there. Turns out there had been an accident on course and our chopper was flagged down to help. By the time rescue personnel arrived and we were back on our way we couldn’t recover the schedule. I stayed with the chopper until it got dark at which time they had to land because no aircraft are allowed to fly at night over Baja.  I then flagged down the support truck of a team I knew. They gave me a ride but they were going the wrong direction, farther south to meet their race vehicle which was down with broken wheel lugs. I tagged along and got the best night photography of my career showing the team welding lugs onto the race car’s chassis in the middle of nowhere in the dark.

Having planned in advance what should happen if we didn’t connect at the fueling spot, Gayle knew not to wait for me any longer than 1pm. Following the course map she found a couple of crossover points where she got more race shots. As darkness fell she went back to race central in Ensenada and tracked which racers would be arriving at the finish line soon. It was the year “Dust to Glory” was being filmed and she engaged in some interesting conversation with the crew and director. She got some amazing shots at 2am of the winner of the bike class taking the flag (she loves to point out the two seconds in the movie where the camera pans past her as the winner comes in. After a few more hours of shooting she went back to our ultimate meeting location (a nearby ranch used by racers). No one was there and the generators shut off at night. She found her way to a room in the dark. A few hours later I was dropped off by the crew I’d spent the night with.  Even with all the downtime they experienced they never quit and won the championship with my photos to prove it. Gayle and I had great stories to share when we reconnected. And we reconnected without panic because we had a plan and a contingency plan with an if-all-else-fails meeting location (the ranch).

6. Relax and take time to enjoy

the wonders of Ensenada like the local fish market where you’ll see fish being offloaded from boats and the best $1 fish tacos at stands just outside. Drink only bottled drinks.  You can also go high-end for a great dinner at the upscale Sano’s restaurant just north of town. Try the spinach salad, a ribeye medium rare with baked potato and a great glass of local Santo Tomas red. It doesn’t get much better.

7. Join a pit crew.

Really got the bug? Most Baja pit teams are made up of volunteers. Some of these contract support teams, with members from all over the world, have been meeting in Baja annually for decades, hauling in everything imaginable to service and fuel their contracted racer teams. Since many pit stops are hundreds of miles below the border and teams have to get there at least a day in advance there’s no skimping on making life a great party. Great food, people, equipment and drink plus every possible luxury imaginable (including swimming pools) can be found out there, hundreds of miles from nowhere. Sublime madness. Do an internet search on “Baja pit crews.”

As successful as the Shelby American operation was, Carroll didn’t really understand the potential of a viable brand using his name with his attendant racing success. Any attempt on my part to upgrade our initial “Shelby” or “Goodyear” merchandise was met with resistance because of cost. Shelby saw the advantage of promoting his name with “T” shirts but would only allow the cheapest materials to minimize cost. He didn’t understand that superior materials would last indefinitely as “collector items” and continue to promote visibility.  Shelby simply didn’t have the facilities or people to promote and market any internally created products.  Shelby’s rather small team of mechanics and fabricators were “racers”, without question the BEST in the racing game, with only one goal…WIN! But there wasn’t anyone internally who understood the potential of the Shelby brand. Later this became obvious and was one reason that Shelby allowed himself to be taken over by Ford when the opportunity came up to develop the GT40s. Ford had the expertise, money and a vast organization to promote and merchandise the Ford brand using Shelby’s name a team.

The Type 65 “Super Coupe” was designed to replace the Daytona Cobra Coupe in 1965.  It had a 427 engine, modern suspension and a shape that would theoretically have allowed speeds well over 200 mph.  What it didn’t have was a moveable driver-controlled wing at the rear called a “Ring Airfoil” that was initially planned for the Daytona Cobra Coupe.

Had the wing been used on the Daytona it would have been faster, safer and far easier to drive.  Once it was “discovered” that the Daytona was unstable at speed without the Ring Airfoil a far less complicated “spoiler” was added to the rear which helped tremendously in improving the Daytona’s performance.  Even though the opportunity to fit a Ring Spoiler to the Daytona existed through the 1964 season there was simply no time or opportunity to replace the spoiler and the cars had already proven its superiority over the once invincible Ferrari GTOs. The attitude within the Shelby team was “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it”. Fast enough to win was considered “good enough” without spending more time and money to improve what was already a proven winner.

The Type 65 didn't have a Ring Spoiler because the opportunity to use a “moveable aerodynamic device” on all racing cars had passed by then due to regulations banning them. Others who had adapted moveable “wings” during the interim, like Jim Hall’s Chaparrals and several Formula 1 racers in Europe, were banned when the FIA determined that failures of such devices at high speed would cause a loss of traction and result in crashes that would endanger spectators.

I also wanted the cars to look fast and that’s where the angled side stripes came in. They not only gave the cars the impression of speed, but being the reverse angle of the windscreen they gave the impression of an arrow from a distance.  A person doesn’t consciously notice any of these details but the overall impression is impactful.

Being a factory-based team, marketing coverage was important. Every aspect of the car needed to photograph well. That’s why I had the entire exhaust system, which was a work of art, painted bright yellow and the inside of the engine compartment painted white so all details of these great cars the BRE team built could be clearly seen and appreciated.

Speaking of the car photographing well, the cars needed to stand out from the track so I had a rim of white painted along the outside edge of the front spoilers. This made the front spoiler pop out from the black asphalt of a track.

If someone doesn’t want to copy the BRE graphics, what guidelines would you offer them?

•  Decide on the purpose of the graphics. Is it to enhance the design of the car (as it was with BRE as we were promoting the cars for Datsun/Nissan) or is it to be a signboard (e.g. promoting a sponsor) where the graphics are unrelated to the car. Decide which and stick to it.

•  No matter what the purpose, you want the car to photograph well for social media, articles, etc. Don’t make the common mistake of designing the graphics standing next to the car. I’ve seen graphics that are really beautiful when you’re three feet from the car (e.g. waving flag) that spectators, tv cameras, etc can’t identify as the car races by on the track.  Mock-up your design on the car and look at it at least 50 feet back.

•  Avoid major contrasting colors like black and white. A camera will either shutout light so details in the white show but that will cause the black areas to have no definition or the camera will open-up to get as much light in to see details in the black and the white areas of the car will flare out.

•  The colors you use will be dictated by purpose. Again, do you just want the car to be striking and attention getting or is it to tell a story, advertise a sponsor, promote a country, etc. If the latter, the colors you use are probably dictated by a sponsor’s colors, the colors of a flag and so on.  If you have total freedom on colors my recommendation is go to a tropical fish store. Nature knows what goes together best and you’ll be knocked out by color combinations you’ll find on fish.

•  If you do decide you want to make a BRE Tribute car, contact us to become a member of our BRE Tribute Car program. We provide paint colors, sponsor decals, numbers (even custom numbers I create myself to make sure the shapes and perspectives are correct).