The Baja 1000 Starts Across the Estuary This Week: A Puerto Los Cabos Guide to Race Week in San José del Cabo

At 1 a.m. on Friday, the first motorcycles will roll off a start ramp on Bulevar Centenario in San José del Cabo. SCORE's race-day schedule lists civil dawn that morning at 6:06 and sunrise at 6:30, so those riders will be miles into the desert long before first light. About eight hours later the trucks follow. Then the 59th SCORE Baja 1000 spends most of the next 40 hours far from here, in La Paz, Comondú, Loreto and along the Pacific near Todos Santos.

Puerto Los Cabos sits just across the estuary from where all of this begins. This year's race is shaped like a loop. It leaves town through the San José Wash and comes back through it, so the parts of a nearly 1,000-mile race that anyone here can watch come in three short windows, each a short drive from home. The first window closes this afternoon.

Thursday is the last free look at the trucks

SCORE International is running Contingency Row and technical inspection on Bulevar Centenario between Álvaro Obregón and Manuel Doblado streets. The public event runs 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Wednesday, November 11, and again today, Thursday, November 12. Officials run mandatory mechanical and safety checks, the vehicles are parked where you can walk right up to them, and you can meet the drivers and riders. Contingency is free to attend. According to SCORE's revised schedule, today is set aside for the four-wheel classes that did not go through tech on Wednesday. Contingency Row closes at 5 p.m., but technical inspection at the end of the row continues until 6 p.m. If you want to see the trucks up close, today is the day to go.

The street will be busier than a normal Thursday. Tribuna de México reported that the municipality planned space for about 60 vendors along Centenario, on top of SCORE's sponsor tents. Municipal inspectors also said alcoholic drinks in glass containers would not be allowed at the festivities.

Today also ends the official pre-running period, which began October 24 at the start/finish area on Centenario. For almost three weeks, registered teams have been allowed to drive the course to learn it. SCORE says that since September 2025 it has added pre-running rules to protect residents. Racers must stop completely at marked road crossings, slow down through towns, and pass warning signs posted a mile before and after each populated area. SCORE staff are posted along the course to watch speeds. If race trucks have been showing up in your rearview mirror lately, that is why.

Friday runs on two clocks

The start is split into two separate events with a gap of about eight hours between them. All times below are local, as listed on SCORE's official schedule revised October 26.

The 1 a.m. start belongs to the motorcycles, and this year's motorcycle field includes a record. SCORE reported that Pro Moto Ironman, the class for riders who race the whole course alone with no relief rider, had 37 registered competitors, an all-time SCORE high. Those riders will cover the opening miles in the dark, and many will still be riding the following night.

The 9 a.m. start is the one built for a crowd. SCORE expects thousands of fans along the boulevard, and the four-wheel field includes the Trophy Truck divisions SCORE calls the "Monsters of the Desert." If you plan to see the 8:15 flag ceremony, leave for town early and allow extra time to park, given the vendors and sponsor setup already on Centenario.

The San José Wash is the way out and the way back

From the ramp, racers drop straight into the San José Wash, the first dirt section of the course. They leave the wash near race mile 10 and turn toward the East Cape. At the other end of the race, they come back into the same wash for a final 15-mile run to the finish line on Avenida Centenario. The first ten miles of the race and the last fifteen are the only stretches close to home. The rest is out in the desert.

The East Cape portion has also changed from the original route. SCORE's first course description had racers running the coast to Cabo Pulmo and La Ribera. On October 25, Peninsular Digital reported that the newly published GPS files take the course off the coast at Los Frailes and inland toward Santiago and El Campamento, a change that affects the first 80 miles. If you have heard about watching the early miles from a beach in La Ribera, that plan is based on the old route.

The same report lists 55 speed-limited zones covering 155.24 miles of the course. Forty-nine of them are capped at 37 miles per hour. Loreto's waterfront Malecón is one of the 37-mph sections.

Closer to home, The Cabo Local describes a spectator area with jumps in the San José arroyo that you watch from behind barricades. At a race-week coordination meeting, the municipality's Protección Civil office asked spectators to stay inside the marked areas, keep clear of the vehicles' path, and follow instructions from safety and emergency staff, Bitácora BCS reported.

The finish starts Friday night and runs into the weekend

Every class has a 40-hour official time limit. Counting from the start times, that puts the last possible motorcycle finish at 5 p.m. Saturday and the last possible four-wheel finish at 1 a.m. Sunday. SCORE starts posting unofficial finishers at 9 p.m. Friday, so the fastest vehicles could be back on Centenario on Friday night. After that, finishers keep arriving through Saturday. Teams in the slower classes will race through two nights before they reach the end.

Sunday wraps up the week. SCORE's schedule posts unofficial results at 7 a.m. and official results at 10:30 a.m. The awards celebration starts at noon at the Club Campestre Beach Club in the Tourist Corridor. Rat Sult, the "Voice of SCORE," hosts the ceremony, and winners are honored across more than 40 professional and Sportsman classes. If you want to follow the race from your terrace instead of the roadside, SCORE says it will stream the race on its website, its app, its Facebook page and its YouTube channel.

If you head into the mountains this weekend, there is one restriction to know about. Tribuna de México reported that on Friday, visitors using the dirt road into Rancho La Rueda in the Sierra de la Laguna must enter before noon, and excursion vehicles must be out by 1 p.m. Trips up on Saturday are discouraged, and Friday morning or Sunday are suggested instead.

Why San José del Cabo wants the race to come back

This is the first Baja 1000 run entirely within Baja California Sur in the race's nearly six-decade history. When the route was unveiled on October 3, Víctor Montaño Gaytán, the municipality's Director of Public Relations, estimated that race week would bring $35 million in economic activity. Celestino Atienzo Beltrán, who chairs the council's tourism commission, said he hoped the race would become a permanent event here. Municipal Tourism Director Ana Gabriela Navarro González said it was important to bring in major events during a season that needs a boost.

Airport figures help explain what she meant. Grupo Aeroportuario del Pacífico's third-quarter 2026 results show 748,700 international passengers at Los Cabos airport in the July-to-September quarter. That was down 16.2% from a year earlier. Domestic passengers rose 4.2% over the same period to 793,900. A race that SCORE describes as drawing more than 250 teams from Asia, Europe, Oceania and the Americas brings an international crowd to town in mid-November.

If the race does return, the pattern this week shows will probably hold. The festival happens in town on Centenario and Plaza Antonio Mijares, the start and the finish both run through the San José Wash, and Puerto Los Cabos is a short drive from all of it.

We live here too, and race week is part of what makes autumn in San José del Cabo its own season. If you are thinking about how a home east of the estuary fits the way you like to spend weeks like this one, SunLinks Real Estate is glad to talk it through. Contact Us.