The San Felipe 250 begins and ends at the small fishing town of San Felipe on the Gulf of California, and in between it sends its competitors through 250 miles of Baja California Peninsula desert. Since its first running in 1982, the race has been one of the four events in the SCORE International series — the organization that also sanctions the Baja 500 and the Baja 1000, off-road racing's most famous and most grueling events. The San Felipe 250 is the youngest and shortest of the major SCORE races, which does not make it easy. The Baja Peninsula does not offer easy terrain to anyone traveling quickly through it.
SCORE International sanctions a four-race season in Baja California that forms the backbone of professional off-road racing in North America. The Desert Challenge, the San Felipe 250, the Baja 500, and the Baja 1000 represent a progression from the modest to the legendary, and completing all four in a season is an achievement that earns recognition in racing circles. The San Felipe 250 falls early in the season, serving as both a competitive event and a shakedown for teams whose equipment and strategy will face far greater tests in the Baja 500 and Baja 1000. The 2016 race was the event's 30th anniversary, marking three decades of spring racing on the Baja Peninsula.
Unlike the Baja 1000, which traditionally runs from Ensenada in the north to La Paz in the south on a single-direction course, the San Felipe 250 uses a loop format — starting and finishing in the same town. This has logistical advantages for a race of 250 miles: teams can position support vehicles and spare parts at San Felipe and reach competitors more efficiently than a linear point-to-point race would allow. The loop also means that spectators can watch the start and finish without traveling, which suits the event's profile as a regional racing spectacle as well as a professional competition. San Felipe, with its location on the Gulf of California and its connection to mainland Baja California via paved road, is accessible enough to draw a crowd.
The San Felipe 250 fields competitors across a wide range of vehicle classes. Motorcycles and ATVs race the same desert terrain as larger vehicles, and their classes attract some of the most skilled individual riders in off-road racing — people who navigate the same rocks, silt beds, and arroyos that swallow trucks whole, but with nothing around them for protection. The truck and car classes range from heavily modified production vehicles to purpose-built race machines with thousand-horsepower engines and sophisticated suspension systems designed specifically for high-speed desert travel. The shared course means that a motorcycle that departed hours earlier may still be out on the route when the fastest trucks catch up — requiring navigation judgment that the slower vehicles don't need.
What makes Baja Peninsula off-road racing distinctive is not speed — there are faster motorsports — but the terrain and the conditions. The Baja California Peninsula is a geological adolescent, having separated from mainland Mexico relatively recently in tectonic terms, and its surface reflects that turbulent history: volcanic rock, decomposed granite, silt that behaves like quicksand when wet, dry washes that become rivers with minutes of warning. Racing through this terrain at speed requires a combination of mechanical preparation and situational judgment that laboratory-controlled motorsports do not. The San Felipe 250 takes place in spring, when the desert is transitioning between its cooler winter and its brutal summer, and the conditions on any given year can vary from cold mornings and firm ground to warm afternoons and deteriorating course surfaces. The desert decides the race more than the competitors do.
San Felipe lies at approximately 31.027°N, 114.835°W on the Gulf of California coast of Baja California, Mexico. The town is visible from altitude as a small coastal settlement with the turquoise waters of the Gulf to the east and the desert Baja Peninsula extending to the west. The race course extends inland through the Sierra de San Pedro Mártir foothills and desert terrain. The nearest airport with commercial service is Mexicali International Airport (MXL) approximately 120 miles to the north. San Felipe also has a small airport.