The two-event Mexico National Cross Country Championship will include the Baja Rally.
Baja Rally LLC, organizer Bajarallymoto.com and Mexico’s Rally Playero Entertainment announced that they have formed an international alliance to create a national “rally raid” series for motorcycles, ATVs and UTVs in Mexico.
The new series will be known as the Mexico National Cross Country Championship, and it will start in 2015 with two events. The cornerstone event will be the third-running of the Baja Rally, which is schedule to take place in Baja California September 28-October 2, 2015. Plans call for the second event in the series to be held in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca in December 2015.
Baja Rally LLC & Rally Playero Entertainment will operate their respective rallies independently while sharing the same rulebook and key personnel including FIM certified juror Romina Addiego, who will serve as Operations Director for both events. Rally Playero has been hosting FIM style rally raids in Mexico since 2010.
Baja Rally Competition Director Andy Grider said that the announcement is a sign of progress for rally racing in North America.
“This is a huge step for the sport,” Grider said. “We now have multiple rallies forming a new series in Mexico. It’s huge for the riders, Rally Playero and for the future of our sport.”
Grider, a five-time Dakar competitor and one of the only Americans to ever stand on a Dakar podium (as a co-driver in 2009), was recently named as the Competition Director of the Baja Rally.
Baja Rally LLC’s partnership with Rally Playero stems from the work of Mexican motorcycle racer, Octavio “Chivo” Valle, the only Mexican to finish the Dakar Rally twice. In December 2013, Chivo invited Baja Rally founder Scotty Breauxman to RP’s Trans Oaxaca Monster Rally Raid. There, the two men outlined a program and recruited Patrick Reyes for advisory consulting.
“We are passionate about Rally, even when times were tough,” explains Rally Playero founder Patrick Reyes, “But this is what has kept us going though the difficulties of promoting a new, growing sport in Mexico and North America. We couldn’t be more happy to create an alliance with Baja Rally to get more riders, sponsors and government involvement in our sport.”
While the sport of rally raid is much more popular in Europe, Africa and South America than it is in North America, Grider added that the timing for the series is good.
“I’ve seen what they’re doing in Greece, Tunisia, Mongolia and South America,” Grider said. “Rally is a global sport, and North America is the last to catch on. There’s no place to go but up. We’ve had riders competing in both rally raids for two years now, so it made sense to join forces and adapt to the same rule book and technical aspects. The next big step is arranging freight shipping to anyone competing in both events.”
The overall winner of the Mexican National Cross Country Championship will be determined by a simple points chart based on the overall cumulative points scored in each of the two races. The points chart can be found in Section 4.4 of the 2015 Baja Rally Rulebook.
You can download the 2015 Baja Rally Rulebook HERE.
The Baja Rally was the first ever navigation based rally-raid to be staged in Baja California. Founded in March 2012, it is a multi-day rally raid modeled after the world famous Dakar Rally. Rally Playero Entertainment and founders Patrick Reyes and Hernan Samaniego are the first North Americans to host a true rally raid event on the continent since the Nevada Rally two decades ago. Reyes and Samaniego and have hosted rallies in the Mexican state of Oaxaca for more than five years.
For more information on the Baja Rally 3.0 and the 2015 Mexico National Cross Country Championship, visit www.bajarallymoto.com.
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