https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Clola49Bf6c

On Tampa Racing some event coverage and off road history is here:
https://www.tamparacing.com/forums/e...ja-1000-a.html

How Ford built the first Raptors and then made the Raptor-R Race Edition and raced it in the 2008 Baja 1000. Finally, for all of you other Raptor owners, the full movie! Sit down, get some popcorn, throw it up on your TV... it's a great story!

JUST TO BE TOTALLY CLEAR, THE RAPTOR WAS ONLY RACING AGAINST THE 9 OTHER CLASS-8 TRUCKS THAT ENTERED THE 2008 BAJA 1000.

The Raptor team finished 3rd place in their Class-8 series with a time of 25:28:10. The Class-8 series are trucks based on stock frames. They did not finish 3rd place overall. Out of 9 Class-8 trucks that started the race, only 4 finished of which the Ford Raptor placed 3rd. The Baja 1000 is really like 30 races happening at the same time. The motorcycles are racing motorcycles, the buggies are racing buggies, the ATVs are racing other ATVs, the trucks are racing trucks. But then each series of vehicle has multiple classes that are distinct as well. So a tubular body trophy truck with 800hp isn't even racing a stock frame truck like the Raptor, even though they're on the same course.

From watching the movie, the Raptor-R blue "donor" truck may have just been a regular F-150, that they added all the Raptor suspension/motor/wiring/body parts onto since all the body parts and suspension and everything all arrive unpainted and in boxes (see 9:31) (Including the prototype cup holders which I'm sure were sent because of the 4 up-switch panel unique to Raptor...) I would love for someone who was involved in the production of this Raptor-R to chime in at some point and tell us more.

The Raptor-R race edition from this movie is basically a stock Raptor with a safety cage/fuel cell to meet race requirements and a slightly beefed up motor. The Raptor-R motor is lightly ported with headers, a bigger cam, and a larger throttle body intake to get it close to 500 hp (see 11:51). If you're just interested to see what they did to the stock F-150 truck to make it a Raptor-R, watch from about 7:20 to 18:55.

 

Watch this movie at least twice!