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
Short-Course PRO-4s. The result is no less than 83 career victories
and 11 championships:
8 Desert
Championships,
2 Short-Course Championships.
2-time BorgWarner Champion,
Inaugural Winner of the AMSOIL Cup,
3 Baja 1000 Class Wins, and the 1993 SCORE San Felipe 250 overall
winner.
This is 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. Then in 2010 new pulled off the
"double." At Crandon's Spring Challenge Cup event, Scott just missed
the win by less than .2 of a second. Then at the Fall Event, Scott
took home the trophy as the inaugural winner of Crandon's Fall
challenge race, the AMSOIL Cup.
