I just faxed off our down payment for the registration fees for this year’s Baja 1000: $200 to SCORE and mailed a check for $500 for pit support to Baja Pits. (I can’t say enough great things about how well Carlos and his folks took care of us last year).
We get asked a lot how much it costs to do this race. Here’s a breakdown of the major expenses:
SCORE International registration fee: $2,075.00
Baja Pits registration: $500.00
110 Octane race fuel – 150 gallons @ $8.95 a gallon): $1,342.50
Then you have individual expenses –
SCORE membership: $75
Mexico Tourist visa: $40 (If you want to pay a guy to go to the bank and handle the paperwork for you – which you do.)
International Driving Permit: $15 (You can get this at AAA).
Then add to that fuel for the RVs, chase and passenger vehicles that go down. That’s several thousand simoleans.
But other than that, that’s pretty much it. Granted, that’s not counting construction of the car, spare parts and tires. Our sponsors, like Bilstein and Skips Tire’s, have been great and their support has been invaluable.
We’re getting together next weekend to start final prep on the car. We’ll be looking at the shift linkage bushings, it needs to be painted, we need to get going on skid plates and Richard will be putting together a checklist that we’ll use to prep the car once we’re down in Mexico.
Last year we went for a “rear start” – meaning you start at the back of the pack of the cars in your class. Since there were only eight of us in 2007, that mean we got an extra 3 minutes of prep time from when the first Class 11 went off the starting line. This year I’ve decided we’re going out first. We’ll just have to be ready to go three minutes earlier.
