The 2007 SCORE Baja 500 was another tribute to the “World's Toughest Off-Road Tires^®” as BFGoodrich^® tires took eight of the top-ten finishing spots and 12 class victories overall. The winning duo of Larry Ragland and Brian Collins utilized patience and perseverance against a SCORE-record field of 492 starters to capture a second-straight overall 4-wheel and SCORE Trophy-Truck victory at the 39th annual event and the 12th consecutive overall victory for BFGoodrich Tires. We caught up with Larry to get his view of the race.

“We had a perfect race,” said Ragland. “Actually, I didn’t even realize that I had a flat until the last asphalt part, and the tire wasn’t really flat, just real low. We had to go off-course to avoid another vehicle and I must have hit a boulder or something. I probably could have made the finish but I didn’t want to risk anything. It was a little crazy, but we had about a two-minute lead and we got the tire changed in a little over a minute and-a-half. It was so close that once the jack dropped I left my co-driver behind and raced real hard for the last eight miles to the finish. My crew then went back into the desert to bring him back for the celebration.”

Ragland’s final charge in his BFGoodrich-tires-equipped Chevy Silverado allowed him to cross the finish line with more than three minutes to spare. The win was Ragland’s seventh class triumph, fifth overall victory at the SCORE Baja 500 and tenth career SCORE Trophy-Truck race win. Ragland has been associated with BFGoodrich Tires for almost 20 years and commented that his BFGoodrich Baja T/A^{® KR} tires performed so well that he and Collins were able to race almost 200 miles on one set of tires.

“BFGoodrich tires are ideal, and I trust them whenever I race,” said Ragland. “I go into these races not anticipating any flats because I trust BFGoodrich so much. I’ve won all of my Baja races on BFGoodrich tires, and we were able to go nearly 200 miles before changing rear tires, which we only did as a precaution. We didn’t have time to inspect the tires but they could have kept going, so that says a lot for how tough they are.”

That is quite an accomplishment. Because the 200 miles of torture that BFGoodrich tires undergo in desert racing competition is more punishment than a set of off-road tires might receive in a year of non-competitive driving.

“This course had some fast sections but it also had some extremely tough and slow sections and you can compare the tire wear to how hard you drive,” said Ragland. “My theory in racing is to go slower than most technical drivers in the slow areas and faster than most technical drivers in the fast areas and that’s how we made up the time. We were running pretty hard throughout this race, but above all else you can’t afford to make a mistake because as the saying goes, ‘to finish first, you must first finish’ and our BFGoodrich tires helped us have a great race.”

Ragland and Collins’ choice of tires for tackling the challenging, dust-filled Baja 500 course in only nine hours, ten minutes and 58 seconds was a set of 39x13.50R17 BFGoodrich Baja T/A^{® KR} tires. The legendary Baja T/A^KR tire was purposely engineered to handle the grueling conditions of off-road racing.