The NORRA 500 in October will be the first with bikes since 2021. While not as long as its springtime sister Mexican 1000, Jimmy Lewis is pleased with the work he and the Moto team have done in creating the route.

“If you want to know what it was like to race Baja back in the ’90s,” he remarked about the course, “this is the race for you.”

As NORRA’s bike director, Lewis had been a key figure in getting the sanctioning body to add motorcycles back to the 500. They were initially removed after 2021 due to low entrants, but renewed interest prompted him to challenge riders to sign up before they’re added.

Once the minimum of ten registrants was reached, he and the crew got to riding and verifying the route they planned out. Save for some very slight tweaks, they were more than satisfied with how it turned out.

Lewis described the course as “really fun two tracks that aren’t beat up, the kind of stuff that has really fun rollers. Not hoop-de-doos. Rollers, where you get to jump over things. There are a lot of direction changes and the stuff you dream of riding on.”

Fellow Off-Road Motorsports Hall of Famer and crew member Tim Morton, who was part of the recon team, remarked he was “blown away how bitchin’ it is.”

Morton noted the race will go through sections so rarely touched that even NORRA race director Eliseo Garcia only learned about them “a couple months ago.” Some ranches and tracts of land on the route are also long forbidden from use for racing, though NORRA managed to get permission this one time.

“Fun, flowy, hilly, turny stuff that will blow your mind,” he commented. “There are sections NOBODY gets to ride, ever, and some stuff I never knew existed, never even heard rumors of these trails.”

Scheduled for October 9–12, the NORRA 500 will consist of a prologue stage followed by two days of racing. Riders can compete either with a roadbook or using a GPS, which is new for the 500.

Featured image credit: Fotosol