INTERVIEW: Brock Heger “looking forward to the adventure” of Dakar Rally debut

Brock Heger has starred in all forms of American off-road racing throughout his life, whether it be the twisty circuits of short course, the rocks of Johnson Valley, or the sweeping deserts along the West Coast. In January 2025, he will embark on his biggest journey yet when he heads to Saudi Arabia for his Dakar Rally début, driving the Polaris RZR Factory Pro R Factory for Sébastien Loeb Racing in the SSV category. Polaris Factory Racing team-mate Max Eddy Jr. will serve as his co-driver.

The Checkered Flag sat down with Heger on Monday to discuss the deal coming together, how his career with Polaris Factory Racing brought him to this point, and the roles that defending Dakar SSV winner Xavier de Soultrait and SLR are playing in helping him adjust to a new discipline.

Getting the Opportunity

In January, PFR held their annual pre-season press conference with Heger and his colleagues. At one point, they were asked if they would consider racing the Dakar Rally if possible; Heger was the first to say something, quickly answering that he “wouldn’t say no.” Even then, to already have a ride lined up just seven months later was far sooner than he would have anticipated.

“I didn’t know it would happen this soon,” Heger admitted. “It was just one of those things when I started with Polaris and the whole new team. I saw that they were going there with Xavier last year and everything, so I just kind of figured that there was an opportunity there at some point. I just wanted to put my best foot forward and do everything right, everything I could on my end to be doing good and winning races, and just try to put myself in a good situation where if the time does come that I’m on the list of going. With it coming out and happening so soon, I didn’t think it would happen this soon, but I’m looking forward to it.”

Heger’s pedigree made plenty of sense for Polaris whilst looking for someone from their factory teams to try their hand at rally. He is the reigning SCORE International Pro UTV Open champion, claiming the title in PFR’s début campaign in 2023, while his 2024 began with two victories at King of the Hammers, where he respectively won in UTV Open and Pro Stock Turbo at the Toyo Tires Desert Challenge and Can-Am UTV Hammers Championship. Indeed, he cites “multiple things” for influencing Polaris’ decision.

“My long career, some of it came from my success last year with Polaris and the whole new team with SCi (Scanlon Clarke Incorporated) and the success on the desert side,” he began. “I think a lot had to come with that and I think a lot came with it, my team principals, everyone around me just trying to push me to be a professional athlete. I think it’s just kind of numerous things and just being at the right place at the right time.”

Before joining Polaris, Heger had been tearing it up in other off-road series with success in UTVs, trucks, and buggies. His short course achievements included the 2018 Crandon World Cup in Pro Lite, five class championships in the now-defunct Lucas Oil Off Road Racing Series, and Championship Off-Road’s Pro Lite and Pro Stock SxS titles in 2021 followed by a repeat of the latter a year later. Having raced since he was seven, Heger also claimed three consecutive Best In The Desert titles from 2017 to 2019 and competed in the Stadium Super Trucks during its inaugural season in 2013.

Given these accolades, he seems prepared to add yet another discipline to his résumé.

“I’ve done a lot of forms of racing and different types of terrain,” commented Heger. “I think it has helped me throughout the years with short course and being able to have that intensity to doing every type of desert racing, different states and different terrain, that side of stuff. I live in the desert; growing up around the desert scene and trying to read terrain and everything, I feel like I do pretty good at it. Just having the diverse kind of background on a lot of racing in the dirt, I think that’s kind of helped me looking forward to putting it to the test.”

The Polaris RZR Pro R Factory that Heger will pilot shares plenty of overlap with his desert UTV. Team technical director Alex Scheuerell told The Checkered Flag during the latest Dakar that the rally version, labelled internally as the “international or FIA” model, uses an identical engine and generally the same components as the North American variant, though differences include a windshield and additional bodywork like sidepods for spare parts and to comply with FIA SSV regulation. Much of the rally car was eventually used to design the second-generation RZR Pro R that PFR introduced for 2024.

“I have driven it numerous times and it’s really fun to drive,” Heger said. “It’s very, very similar to our race cars now, our Gen-2 race cars. There’s just a few minor things that have their differences and it’s nice knowing that they’re very similar to our cars now. When it comes time to go in there, it’s not going to be something completely different.”

Polaris Factory Racing

Polaris has been on a tear since PFR’s formation. The team’s drivers won their class at all four SCORE races in 2023 and pushed their streak to both rounds of 2024 so far courtesy of Cayden MacCachren, who leads the Pro UTV Open points. Heger won the Baja 500 and Baja 400 en route to his 2023 crown, and is currently third halfway through the 2024 World Desert Championship with a second at the San Felipe 250 and twelfth at the Baja 500.

When MacCachren spoke with TCF after his San Felipe win, he was vocal about how Heger, Eddy, and boss-slash-driver Craig Scanlon have improved him as a driver. Heger echoed the sentiment on Monday, describing their relationship as basically being friends but rivals.

“With this whole team, we just push each other to be better,” Heger explained. “We race against each other and whatnot, but we try to push each other to be the best that we can. We try to push our equipment to make the equipment the best that we can, so it’s nice having a bunch of competitive team-mates that just want the best out of everyone.”

MacCachren also had plenty of praise for Heger’s individual driving prowess, going as far as to call him a “generational talent behind the wheel. He’s natural, he was born with it, obviously he’s been racing a lot, but he has something that not a lot of people have: it’s the link from his brain to his hands to, honestly, his butt in the seat. He just feels what the car is doing and can respond to that so well.”

Heger was certainly flattered when his team-mate’s description was relayed to him, especially as he isn’t entirely sure how he would describe his own driving style himself. MacCachren’s words especially resonated with Heger as someone who idolised his father and off-road legend Rob MacCachren growing up.

“I feel I have a good feel to my equipment and being able to put it to the test with trying to keep the car together. I don’t know. I’ve done it for so long, it’s hard to narrow it back,” Heger commented. “It’s very kind of Cayden to say such because his dad is the true definition of a GOAT. His dad is someone I’ve looked up to my entire career starting in short course, that’s what his dad did, and then his career in desert. Just trying to be like Rob, he’s one of the best to ever do it, and it’s obviously really cool to look up to him and now obviously to be racing with his son.”

Eddy is a new addition to the PFR driver line-up for 2024, sitting thirteenth in the SCORE Pro UTV Open standings. A five-time Baja 1000 bike champion, he had previously run the 2019 Dakar Rally with Cole Potts and was Scanlon’s co-driver before being promoted to the left-side seat. Despite his new job, he called the shots for Heger in the UTV Hammers Championship since he wished to gain more rock racing experience; he followed up by finishing runner-up to Heger in the Toyo Tires Desert Challenge.

Although co-drivers are often a bit of a ‘dead weight’ for Heger, the tandem worked so well together that Polaris asked Eddy to serve in the same capacity for Dakar. Soultrait had also been instrumental in convincing the team to recruit Eddy because the connection between a driver and navigator is of vital importance, regardless of the latter’s qualifications in general.

“It’s huge to have Max going and riding with me,” said Heger. “He’s done it before so his expertise on that side is going to be huge. He’s a friend of mine, he’s a team-mate of mine, he’s an American as well, so to have Max going, having him in the right seat just gives me that extra edge of confidence. I’m really looking forward to having him there.

“I’ve lacked maybe a little bit of having a really good co-driver and everything that Max showed there. With Dakar coming up and needing a really important co-driver, I felt like it was very important to get him there.”

The Dakar Adventure

“I’m looking forward to the adventure. I’m not positive on what that adventure looks like, but I’m looking forward to the challenge.”

– Brock Heger

Rally raids in Saudi Arabia are not exactly the same as a desert race in Baja California. Fellow American and SSV competitor Sara Price, who talked with TCF before her own Dakar début last year, described the average Dakar stage as being like a “Baja 500 every single day” for two weeks. Of course, Heger is up for the challenge.

“I’m looking forward to the adventure. I’m not positive on what that adventure looks like, but I’m looking forward to the challenge,” stated Heger. “I’m looking forward to racing with a really good team, racing with Xavier which won last year. He’s been very, very helpful in the journey going there. Working with all the guys, working with Polaris, just trying to be the best we can every day at the stage, whether that’s making the car better or just focusing on different driving techniques to try to be better. Just looking forward to the adventure as a whole.”

When he arrives at the bivouac, he will join a small but decorated group of American rally raiders. Rally raid is a niche motorsport in the United States because of its inaccessibility compared to other forms of off-road racing, being rooted on the opposite side of the Atlantic in Africa and Eurasia; although Mexico has rallies, they are few in number compared to traditional desert events like what SCORE offers, and their prominence grows the further south one travels, albeit more distant from the U.S. as a result. Ricky Brabec, who won the 2024 edition for bikes, even opined in January that it is difficult for his countrymen to break into the sport due to dwindling factory support.

As someone fortunate enough to have said manufacturer backing, Heger looks to make the most of the opportunity while carrying the Stars the Stripes in the process.

“It’d be cool to go and represent USA. I’m from a small town in Imperial Valley, a small farm town, so there’s going to be a lot of small town in the spotlight,” Heger remarked. “Just looking forward to the whole adventure and being one of the few Americans to go and race it. Seth (Quintero) and A.J. (Jones) and the few that go, they have done really well, so just to try to keep that going.”

Besides running the rest of his 2024 schedule with PFR, which consists of this weekend’s Vegas to Reno, the Baja 400, and the equally legendary Baja 1000, Heger will prepare for Dakar by doing navigation training with Jimmy Lewis in September and testing with SLR in Morocco. A 2024 Off-Road Motorsports Hall of Fame inductee, Lewis finished third among motorcycles at the 2000 Dakar Rally and runs the Jimmy Lewis Off-Road Riding School, which has taught those like Price and Brabec for rally raids.

Heger expects the Morocco test to be “be something like stage or mock rallies” with Soultrait and the SLR crew. It is basically a replacement for doing the Rallye du Maroc, also in Morocco and commonly used as a dress rehearsal for those heading to Dakar; SLR did not run the 2023 race.

“There’s a lot more preparation that’s going to go into it,” he explained. “It’s going to be a lot of training on the roadbook side of things. I haven’t quite started, but we’re getting really close to starting that venture. I’m looking forward to it. I want to put in all the work that I possibly can to show up and be prepared and and just to take it day by day.”

While the rally crosses off a ticks off a major item, Heger admits he has yet to “put the ‘what’s next’ on the bucket list after Dakar. I’m just kind of focusing on what I’m doing now and focusing on Dakar and just going to try to do the best I can and get through Dakar and set another target after that. But for now, it’s just clicking them off.” Much of this can be attributed to the fact that a professional racer’s career can end at any time with a poor performance, meaning they prefer to focus on what is immediately next.

In any case, when January arrives, he will be at the start and hopes to shine.

“It’s obviously an honour,” Heger concluded. “There’s a lot of people pushing for this, whether it’s my team principals from SCi and on the desert side and everyone within Polaris that believe that I can go there and do them proud.”

The 2025 Dakar Rally will take place on 3–17 January.