This year’s SCORE Baja 1000 was all about Super teams in the Trophy Truck division. Luke McMillin teamed up with Rob MacCachren in the 4-Wheel Parts Trophy truck. The Super Team of Bryce Menzies and Andy McMillin also teamed up. Menzies was first off the line after winning the SCORE Baja 400. Menzies stayed out front with Luke just minutes behind most of the day. At the halfway point in the race Menzies turned the truck over to Andy. Just a mile down the road, the motor let go in a heartbreaking end to Menzies and Andy’s run. MacCachren and Luke moved into the lead and never looked back. This is Luke’s second consecutive win at the SCORE Baja 1000. The Super Team finished the grueling 1226-mile race in 20 hours 45 minutes and 59 seconds.
“It was a great day. Rob (MacCachren) brought me a great truck in second place. He got on the radio and told me it was a perfect truck so that put the pressure on me that it’s go time. We did our homework, we did our pre-running. We hit our marks. Zero flat tires, zero close calls. The BFGoodrich Tires were unbelievable. We just stayed on the course and did our thing. That made it fun,” said Luke McMillin at the finish line.
“Especially when you hear you are picking up time and closing the time gap. We knew if we could just keep it up we would be in pretty good shape. And that is what happened today. We just kept going and going and got our lead up to 41 minutes, but we weren’t doing anything crazy. The spectators were good. The silt wasn’t bad with our AWD. We just cruised.”
Mark Samuels took the victory in the two-wheeled motorcycle division. Samuels raced the 1x Honda CRF450x with teammates Justin Morgan, Kendall Norman and Brandon Prieto. This is the team’s 12th consecutive title in SCORE.
After a penalty review, Brad Wilson took the Class 1 win for Wilson Motorsports. Phil Blurton put his CanAm X3 on the podium in the UTV Forced Induction Class.
