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Eleven
Championships and Counting!
San Felipe is a sleepy, old-world
fishing village located on the Gulf of California part way down the
infamous Baja California Mexican peninsula. For the past 20-years,
the annual Tecate SCORE San Felipe 250 has turned the town into race
central, hosting what is widely recognized as one of off-road
racing’s premiere events. It was here in 1993 that veteran off-road
racer Scott Douglas did the impossible—taking first overall
in a Class 7 Ford Ranger mini-truck. To do so, Douglas had to
beat the big factory teams fielding unlimited full-size trucks and
the incredibly fast Class 1 entries in his Herzog Racing Ranger.
An incredible feat to say the least, but it is now just one more
footnote in career of this 11-time off-road champion. Scott Douglas
began his off-road career racing motorcycles in the California
desert.
Douglas moved from two to four
wheels in 1980 when he and brother, Steve, took out a loan and
purchased an old Ford F-150 race truck off a used car lot. Not ones
to ease into things, the Douglas brothers prepped the truck and
promptly entered it in the infamous Baja 500. Amazingly, not only
did the Douglas brothers finish the race, but posted an impressive
5th in Class 8.
Douglas’ career took another major leap in 1990 when off-road legend
Walker Evans recognized the up-and-coming talent and hired Douglas
to pilot a factory backed Jeep Cherokee. The result was a class
championship for Jeep and Walker Evans Racing. Evans then moved
Douglas to a Dodge factory ride in a Class 7 Dakota where he
regularly finished ahead of the likes of Roger Mears and Parnelli
Jones. At various stages of his career, Scott Douglas has raced with
and beaten Robby Gordon, Walker Evans, Ivan Stewart, and Jimmie
Johnson. In the desert, Douglas has won championships in SCORE, HDRA,
and the BITD series.
Over the years Douglas has driven everything from stock classes to
the wild unlimited trucks, including SCORE trophy trucks and CORR
Pro-4s. The result is no less than 79 career victories and 11
championships; a record few in off-road racing history can touch.
In the mid-1990s, Douglas was hired to drive the Herzog Dodge Ram
Pro-2 pickup in the growing Short course Off-road Drivers
Association (SODA) series. With winning short course races at the
Riverside International Raceway and in Mexico, and posting podium
finishes in the Mickey Thompson stadium series, Douglas immediately
became a dominant force in SODA. Scott Douglas moved to Pro-4 in
1996, winning the championship for Rampage Racing. The following
year, with the added responsibility of team owner, Douglas repeated
the Pro-4 championship. To put an exclamation point on the season,
Douglas Motorsports also won the highly coveted BorgWarner
Manufacturer’s Challenge Cup at Crandon International Off-Road
Raceway for Ford Motor Company in 1997. Scott repeated his
BorgWarner win in 2006 as well.
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