The Baja 500 was an absolute war! 🤯

What an absolute war the Baja 500 was for our small but mighty team.

After a strong qualifying run that landed us P4 and the truck coming back nice and straight, we knew we had the pace to take it to the best in the world. Having Red Bull officially onboard made it even more special, and you could feel the energy in the team lift going into race day.

I took on the first 265 miles with Brent Bauman calling notes beside me, and the race delivered everything you’d expect from Baja. Never a dull moment. When you think you’ve found rhythm, Baja throws something new at you. That came for us around Race Mile 95 when Tavo missed a VCP and shot back onto course, nearly causing a huge incident. Luckily we dodged it and pressed on.

By Race Mile 100, Brent and I had taken the lead on corrected time. Luke McMillin was still ahead of us physically, but we managed to reel him in by the time we hit Mike’s Summit, making a mostly clean pass at RM205 - maybe just a little love tap for good measure 😂

From there, it was all about pushing every second we could before handing the truck off to Paul at RM265. He kept the pressure on and did a killer job, stretching our lead to over 4 minutes at one stage while Ampudia and the usual suspects came chasing.

Then, as it always does in Baja, something bit us. Paul copped a flat at RM405. Brent was lightning on the tyre change and got him back on course, but Ampudia had taken the lead on the road and the gap was down to just 20 seconds. Game on.

That’s where all the behind-the-scenes work starts paying off. We’d spent hours pre-running and Brent had found a sneaky cut line that Paul took and Ampudia didn’t. That closed the gap to just 1 second. But in the end, there was no catching the defending champ. Alan held on, and we crossed the line just 38 seconds behind to take 2nd outright.

It was one hell of a performance from everyone. These races take so much to piece together, the travel, the prep, the pre-running but when it all clicks, it’s the best feeling in the world.

Now, it’s full focus on the Baja 400, and in the meantime, I’ll be busy jumping into anything else I can drive.

Let’s keep it rolling.