BajaLite Is Back, and It Could Be Your Ticket to Real Baja Racing
The Drive ·
A classic desert-racing class is returning, along with an "arrive-and-drive" program to get new drivers into it and prize money to make it interesting. The post BajaLite Is Back, and It Could Be Your Ticket to Real Baja Racing appeared first on The Drive .
If you want to dabble in off-road racing, you can rent a UTV or even an open-wheel buggy to play with. But there’s so much more to the sport than stepping on the gas pedal. Desert racing, Baja especially, is a tactician’s game. Getting immersed in it is thrilling, challenging, and sometimes terrifying—but deeply rewarding when it all comes together. Unlocking that, for new drivers, is what Desert Race Experience (stylized DRX) is all about.
DRX is actually a few things at once: It’s evolving an established Desert Race School , which teaches people not only how to drive, but how to run and team-manage a race that’s spread across 1,000 miles of Mexican peninsula, while also reviving the storied BajaLite race car class. The DRX Race Series is the outfit’s name for what it does with racing, competing in major off-road events as soon as next year. So Desert Race Experience is a self-contained ecosystem to enter the off-road world through: School, race class, truck production, arrive-and-drive arrangements, and hospitality programs.
BajaLites are particularly awesome because they’re old-school cool (they look like trucks and have proper shiftable transmissions) without being miserable to ride in (like a Class 11 VW Beetle is). They’re also small enough to be relatively inexpensive to operate (humble GM Ecotec engine, 35-inch tires), while allowing for enough chassis customization that leaves racers room to tinker.
Put another way: These are the perfect vehicles to run if you want to do desert racing the real way, like folks in our dads’ era did, while taking advantage of modern safety, customization options, and (relative) comfort. And—can I just say it?—they’re way cooler than UTVs, even if they’re not always faster.
DRX’s page has a rundown of these cars if you’re curious about more technical details. There’s also a big thread on the Race-Dezert forum where the man behind this mission is answering questions from the off-road community.
By owning its own class, DRX is also going to have its own prize money to fight over. And they’re planning to throw down enough to make things interesting.
BajaLites themselves also have a lot of history in the off-road community. The class was most recently run by an unforgettable character of a driver named “Pistol” Pete Sohren , who tragically died in a 2019 off-road incident. After his death, the future of BajaLite was looking grim, until just weeks ago when DRX operators Ron Stobaugh and John Slavic took up ownership of the class, with Sohren’s family’s blessing.
Sohren’s daughter Paige posted a nice note about the development on Facebook , which also provides good context on what BajaLite is all about:
“Years ago: My dad was on a mission to design the most reliable off-road vehicle in desert racing. He was an advocate for working class racers to be able to compete, afford, and maintain their own vehicles, and he wanted something that could withstand the extreme terrain and environment that off road has to offer. The BajaLite was born. He was a dream chaser and believed everyone else should be too. So, he opened up the drivers seat to anyone in the world… Baja Racing Adventures [Sohren’s arrive-and-drive outfit] brought people from all backgrounds, all around the world to live out their bucket lists.
When my dad died, all of that died with him.
But now: The torch has officially been passed. A new team of dreamers have decided to launch a new era of BajaLite trucks. Cheers to Desert Race Experience. We wish you guys the best! ”
Stobaugh and I have a pretty long history, ourselves—which brings me to why I’m so eager to endorse DRX.
In, I think, 2012, I met Stobaugh at a tire demonstration in Malibu, of all places. We bonded over a shared appreciation for dirt and trucks, and he invited me to an off-road event called King of the Hammers that happened to be taking place days later. I drove out to Johnson Valley in a Jeep Cherokee press car, wide-eyed and amazed, as Stobaugh generously introduced me to his family. And by “family,” I mean both his actual relations and people of the desert racing community.
Not only did we stay in touch, but he brought me into his circle. We ended up doing a handful of Baja trips together, and I actually navigated for him in the Baja 1000 in 2015 (and was supposed to again in ’17, but the car blew up before our stint).
Now, about a week out as I write this, I’m rolling with him and his family again, all the way down to Cabo San Lucas, to navigate for him in the first-ever Cabo-to-Cabo loop Baja 1000 . The team’s treating this race as a precursor to DRX’s official launch and BajaLite’s revival. (We’ll actually be driving slightly different cars called TrophyLites this time, as BajaLite chassis production has yet to ramp back up.)
When I raced Baja with Ron in 2015, I got into the car with him at about 9:00 p.m. for our stint, and we didn’t get out until something like 3:00 in the afternoon the next day. We got stuck a lot. We crashed a few times. By the end, I was hallucinating that the cacti had faces, and I still look at desert plants a little suspiciously 11 years later. I titled the subsequent feature story “ When Your Free Mexican Vacation Is A 16-Hour Hellride ,” and it’s still one of my faves from my time at Jalopnik .
After an experience like that, you’re either never speaking again, or bonded on another level, right? Well, I feel proud to say Stobaugh has kept me in his family, and I was deeply honored to get the call to ride with him again this year.
I’d go so far as to say I consider Stobaugh a mentor—not just because he’s a wellspring of knowledge on all things desert racing, but because he’s genuinely a great teacher. He listens. He’s thoughtful. And while he certainly wants to win once checkered flags start waving, he puts safety over everything and, perhaps most importantly, always makes time to have fun. I’m almost looking forward to our transit stage of towing the race car down the peninsula more than the actual race (I’ll be road tripping with the team from Las Vegas to Cabo, a casual 1,300 miles).
All this to say, the fact that he’s now basically a mentor-for-hire is awesome and the perfect application of his skill set. Because anybody with big bucks can buy a race car and tow it to a starting line. But as I said at the beginning—there’s so much more to this world than stepping on the tall pedal. A hell of a lot can happen over 1,000 miles, and after racing in Baja since the ’90s, Stobaugh’s seen it all.
DRX’s operations are effectively picking up now, with this Baja 1000 being treated as a bit of a program pre-run and training starting, well, as soon as the crew gets back to their home base in Utah.
As DRX’s press release says: “Desert Race Experience / DRX Race Series will be exclusively contesting the entire American Off-Road Racing Championship … (UNLTD and Best In The Desert partnership) … and some select SCORE International events in Baja, Mexico. The first race for the DRX Race Series is the Parker 400, January 13-17 [2027] in Parker, AZ, followed by the legendary Mint 400 in Las Vegas, March 3-7.”
The class will officially be named “Spec Lite” in American Off-Road Racing Championship (AORC) events, with numbers 201L through 299L. SCORE (the sanctioning body that runs Baja) has promised a class for next year, but hasn’t named or numbered it yet.
DRX drivers will be able to compete with each other in-class for prize purses in AORC races. Desert racing ain’t cheap, and as Ron has said himself, cutting corners to save money isn’t the idea. “We are not trying to make a cheap racing class. We ARE trying to make a professional mid-size truck class, less expensive than [Spec Trophy Truck],” he wrote on Race-Dezert earlier this fall. Lower costs will get more people in, but DRX’s real value proposition is the built-in race program management and training aspect that comes with it.
If you just want to spend a weekend driving around on rocks and sand, I’d point you to a Jeep rental. But if you want to take on Baja and other big desert races properly, steep yourself in the culture and become part of the desert racing family, this new operation is going to be your golden ticket.
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