Ensenada is still shaking silt out of the boulevard. The 7th SCORE Baja 400 is in the books — race day Saturday, September 12, awards Sunday the 13th — and the peninsula does not give you a long exhale.
The next SCORE round is the one everybody circled in January: the BFGoodrich Tires 59th SCORE Baja 1000, November 9–15, 2026, with the start on Friday the 13th. For the first time in the history of the event, the whole course lives in Baja California Sur. Los Cabos is start and finish. Pre-running opens October 31.
That is eight weeks from this Wednesday. Six weeks until you are legally on the course. If the 400 taught you anything, it is that “we’ll sort comms and GPS after the race” is how you show up to Cabo with a dead radio and a blank map.
This is the eight-week clock.
What the 400 just proved
A 400-mile single loop out of Ensenada is not a dress rehearsal. It is a full SCORE day: silt, whoops, night for the back of the field, chase trucks on Mexican pavement, and a Weatherman net that does not care that your intercom started clipping at mile 180.
If you raced, preran, or chased last weekend, write the failure list down this week while the dust is still in the seats:
- Where did intercom audio fall apart — helmet wiring, PTT, or the radio itself?
- Did the GPS hold a lock in the canyons, or did you need a better antenna and a dock that does not bounce out of the RAM mount?
- Did chase ever actually hear the car, or only the pits?
- Did Starlink stay on the roof, stay powered, and stay pointed — or did it become a $600 paperweight in the wash?
Those are not souvenirs. They are the 1000 punch list. A Cabo 1000 is longer, farther south, and logistically stranger than an Ensenada loop. You do not get to “run it like the 400, but more.” You get a new state, a new start city, and a thousand miles of BCS that most California chase crews have not staged out of.
For the deeper SCORE backstory, we already wrote the history of SCORE International and a Baja desert racing primer. Read those if you are explaining this sport to a sponsor. Then come back here for the kit.
Week 1–2 (now through September 27): tear down, then spec the car
Do not order pretty parts first. Order the things that take programming, wiring, and helmet work.
Communications. If the car talked over itself last Saturday, start with the stack, not another handheld. A Trax Plus intercom plus a real race radio — we kit Comlink X with a Kenwood NX-1700 as a package for a reason — beats a drawer of mismatched mics. Chase needs its own story: the Mobile Radio Chase Package exists so the truck is not borrowing the car’s spare. Browse all radios, UTV radios, and Trax Plus packages. Rec riders who only chase or prerun should still read last week’s Academy note on why a two-way radio is not optional.
Helmets and necks. A 1000 is a long time to find out the skirt leaks silt or the HNR hates your seat. If you are stepping up, look at a Stilo Venti WRX Dirt SA2020 with Stilo adapter cable and RaceAir sorted before you leave California. Necks: NecksGen REV2 Lite or REV X Carbon. Full racks: helmets and head and neck restraints.
Antenna, not vibes. The 400 punishes a bent whip and a cheap mount. If the car went quiet in the silt beds, replace the 3dB racing antenna instead of “testing it again in Cabo.”
Week 3–4 (September 28–October 11): navigation and night
The 1000 will eat anyone still running a phone on a suction cup.
The tool for this peninsula is still the Garmin Tread XL Baja Series in a Baja dock with the dock power cable actually strain-relieved. We covered the unit when it landed — New Product: Garmin Tread XL Baja Series GPS — and the longer explainer is off-road racing GPS navigation. Shop the rest of the Garmin GPS collection.
Night on a 1000 is not “add a light bar.” It is a system. If the 400 left you with a dim chase or a car that went black in silt, rebuild from the Academy lighting guide: how to build the right off-road lighting setup. Hardware lives in LED lighting.
Hydration is a safety item at this distance. In-car, a FluidLogic GPR50 beats a leaking CamelBak you have not pressure-tested since June. Chase can run a CamelBak Unbottle without turning the truck into a chemistry experiment.
Week 5–6 (October 12–31): chase internet, recovery, air, then pre-run
Pre-running opens October 31. That is the hard date. Everything below should already be on the truck.
Starlink that stays on the truck. BCS pavement and dirt both kill a suction-cup “we’ll figure it out in Loreto” plan. Mount a Mini like you mean it: Star-Mount MINI Explorer PRO, DeWalt battery adapter for the hours the truck is shut off, and the rest of Starlink / Starlink mounting. Academy already did the vehicle how-to: complete Starlink Mini vehicle setup. The older Bulletin piece Starlink: the cosmic connection for off-road racers is still the why. If you need sat voice as a backup, that is satcomm.
Recovery is not a Facebook photo. A 1000 DNF is usually a broken thing plus nobody with a rope. Put a kinetic recovery rope and a real Ultimate Recovery Kit in the chase truck, not in the trailer you left in Ensenada. Collection: recovery kits. The Academy checklist: must-have recovery and safety gear. First aid is here, not in a grocery bag.
Air down, air back up. Cabo-to-desert-to-pavement is a compressor problem. If the 400 already cooked a cheap unit, step up to the M.O.A.B. 10.6 CFM dual compressor or the rest of EZ Flate. Academy: what size air compressor you need and how to air down.
Week 7–8 (November 1–12): pre-run notes, then tech
Once pre-running is open, stop shopping and start documenting. Load the course. Confirm Weatherman and team freqs. Walk tech with the same helmet, HNR, and radio you will race. Los Cabos is a beautiful place to find out your PCI Race Gear stack was never programmed for the 1000 net.
The 400 asked whether your Ensenada program worked. The 1000 asks whether you can take that program 800 miles farther south, on a course nobody has run as a full-peninsula-Sur 1000, and keep the car, the chase, and the internet alive until Sunday.
Eight weeks. The silt in the seats is the syllabus. Use it.
Baja Racing Gear — radios, GPS, helmets, Starlink, and the rest of the kit that actually finishes. Continental US free shipping on most orders $300+.
