2024 Baja 400: Bryce Menzies four-peats to bring championship battle to Baja 1000

Bryce Menzies must be feeling some déjà vu. In 2023, he won the Baja 400 to close the gap on his rival and bring the SCORE International World Desert Championship fight to the season-ending Baja 1000. One year later, he won the Baja 400 yet again and now has a chance to clinch his second straight title at the 1000.

After qualifying third, Menzies quickly passed Christopher Polvoorde and began to pursue pole-sitters Toby Price and Paul Weel for the win. The Australians’ #46 was quick, but as the race progressed, Weel noted the “steering was bad, the gearbox was bad, everything was gone. We really pushed the truck today. When you have a guy like Bryce Menzies behind you, you’ve got to push the truck.”

Menzies ultimately got by the Australians and pulled away to win by by three-and-a-half minutes, which was later increased to five minutes due to a speeding penalty on Price. It is his fourth straight Baja 400 win, and he has won all but one edition save for the inaugural race in 2019.

Price’s penalty bumped him down to third and Alan Ampudia up to the runner-up spot. Tavo Vildósola and Ampudia had respectively been ahead of Menzies in the points by ten and six points, but the latter’s win puts him in a drag race with both with one race left. The margin is so close that whoever finishes ahead of the other will be the champion.

“I don’t know what it is about this race, but it’s just good to us,” said Menzies. “We got around Polvoorde early and we just chased Toby down and sat right behind him and he had a tyre go down. We got around him right before we got into the the fuel pit and Toby put his guy in, and then from there we kind of just cruised.

“Pretty easy day. Nothing too crazy. The course got super torn up. Toby was running insane pace the first 280 miles or whatever it was, so that was a wild ride for for a while. After that, we just tried to back it down a little bit, make sure we could bring this thing to the finish.

“To win four out of five, that’s absolutely insane nowadays in Trophy Truck. […] I thought putting the #1 was a curse the last two races, but I guess not so.”

Although the 400 is the second shortest race on the calendar, nine Trophy Trucks failed to reach the finish including Luke McMillin and Rob MacCachren. McMillin retired due to a transmission failure while MacCachren was knocked out by radiator problems. Newly crowned Championship Off-Road Pro Lite champion Trey Gibbs, who won the Trophy Truck Spec pole in his SCORE debut, also bowed out.

One of the bigger incidents involved the TT Spec of Travis Williams, which burst into flames after a rock was lodged under the pedal. Williams shut down the truck to remove the rock from the throttle, but it subsequently ignited instead. He and co-driver Pete Tolar were uninjured.

Other retirements included Pro UTV FI driver Bernardo Perez, whose Can-Am Maverick got stuck. Spectators in the area came over to help by pushing it back into place, but the car reversed over an incline and rolled over, forcing them to push it back onto its wheels.

Polaris Factory Racing‘s Cayden MacCachren and Brock Heger were the top two UTVs, the former tightening his grip on the Pro UTV Open points lead. Heger initially beat MacCachren by just four seconds, but received fifty-seconds of time penalties for speeding that dropped him to second. PFR team principal Craig Scanlon was replaced by substitute driver Dylan Schmoke for the final stretch after what the team called an “unfortunate get off.”

Their PFR colleague Max Eddy Jr. and his Polaris RZR Factory R finished fifth in Class 1, the first time in SCORE history that a UTV entered the category. He was forty-two minutes back of class winner Kyle Quinn after having to change an axle and suffering two flat tyres.

“We took a lot of key learnings from last month’s Vegas to Reno, and it’s clear the team put those to use,” said PFR technical director Alex Scheuerell. “Cayden and Brock, as well as our other Polaris-supported drivers Wayne (Matlock, third in Pro UTV Open) and Branden (Sims, fourth) all drove exceptionally. This is truly a team effort, and I’m proud of everyone involved in this victory.”

While Polaris has dominated the Pro UTV Open side, Rodrigo Ampudia won in Pro UTV FI for his first class victory since the 2023 San Felipe 250. He was tenth among all UTVs.

On the bike side, Justin Morgan and his team held off Pro Moto Unlimited leader Arturo Salas Jr. to win by fifteen minutes. 2023 titlist Juan Carlos Salvatierra was third in his return to the championship after skipping the Baja 500; his team-mates consisted of Shane Logan, Corbin McPhearson, and 2024 Hattah Desert Race winner Callum Norton in his first SCORE race.

The #15X team led by Eric Holt retired after accidentally taking one of the shortcuts reserved for the Sportsman classes. Holt started the race before relinquishing it to his team due to injuries sustained days prior when a UTV crashed into him.

Both Class 11 cars of Oliver Flemate and Eric Solorzano reached the finish. While it only had two entries, it was the second time in 2024 where the Beetles had a 100% finish rate after San Felipe, also with Flemate and Solorzano.

Class winners

4-Wheelers

Class	Overall Finish	Number	Driver of Record	Time
Baja Challenge	DNF	N/A	No Finishers	DNF
Class 1	17	138	Kyle Quinn	8:44:27.428*
Class 1/2-1600	69	1606	Daniel Goodrich	11:05:16.846*
Class 5 Unlimited	87	500	Eli Yee	12:33:01.808
Class 7	54	711	Richard Fant	10:20:22.034*
Class 7F	94	700F	Justin Park	13:50:30.734
Class 7SX	DNF	N/A	No Finishers	DNF
Class 8	DNF	N/A	No Finishers	DNF
Class 10	32	1014	Bruce Yee	9:13:24.884
Class 11	101	1	Oliver Flemate	15:21:14.328
Pro Stock UTV	55	3925	Kaden Wells	10:21:35.533
Pro UTV Forced Induction	50	2910	Rodrigo Ampudia	9:48:42.010*
Pro UTV Normally Aspirated	84	1984	David Pedder	12:11:57.160*
Pro UTV Open	27	1821	Cayden MacCachren	9:05:51.937
SCORE Lites	65	1203	Oliver Flemate	10:50:29.283*
Trophy Truck	1	1	Bryce Menzies	7:53:57.317
Trophy Truck Legends	7	1L	Gus Vildósola	8:24:25.603
Trophy Truck Spec	9	297	Jorge Sampietro	8:31:57.764*
Sportsman Unlimited Buggy	DNF	N/A	No Finishers	DNF
Sportsman UTV	76	1918	Alfredo Olmedo	11:33:49.134*

* – Received a time penalty

Moto/Quad

Class	Overall Finish	Number	Rider of Record	Time
Pro Moto 30	21	304X	Juan Esteban Miranda	11:28:54.280
Pro Moto 40	DNF	N/A	No Finishers	DNF
Pro Moto 50	18	547X	Mike Prunty	11:16:49.316
Pro Moto 60	28	616X	Harry Harris	12:35:18.169
Pro Moto Adventure	34	805X	Dustin Davis	15:11:50.177
Pro Moto Ironman	14	788X	Brian Roberts	10:48:29.116
Pro Moto Limited	9	110X	Armando Ortiz	10:22:33.559
Pro Moto Unlimited	1	7X	Justin Morgan	8:46:56.963*
Pro Quad	11	31A	Estevan Ramirez	10:28:08.561
Sportsman Moto	8	236X	Andy Valencia	10:21:11.921
Sportsman Quad	7	110A	Irlamm Gutierrez	10:19:06.510