Ronnie Anderson scores maiden desert win in Mint 400 Limited

Ronnie Anderson knows how to win in short course. He can now say he knows how to win in the open desert, and what better place to earn his first desert overall victory at than the legendary Mint 400?

Anderson, racing a Polaris in the UTV Pro Open class, won the Mint’s Limited race on Friday after a frantic late run in which he had to pass numerous lapped cars and chase down classmate Ryan Piplic. Piplic was one of the favourites alongside World Rally-Raid Championship star Mitch Guthrie and 2023 winner Joe Terrana, only to suffer a flat tyre on the final lap. Despite losing a power steering belt as he pulled into pit, Anderson took advantage of Piplic’s issue to set the fastest time.

“It feels amazing, that’s my first desert overall win right there,” said Anderson. “Pretty happy to be able to do it here at the Mint 400. Legendary race and a really, really, really tough one that a lot of people like to win. Super, super excited. So proud of my whole team, they worked their butts off for moments like this. Wouldn’t want to have it any other way.

“We come from a short course background and usually we’re sprinters through and through, but learn pretty quickly here that desert racing is more about the marathon than the sprint. It’s brutal; it actually wasn’t too bad lap one, but over the hundreds of cars going lap after lap after lap, by lap four it was absolutely brutal. There wasn’t a section on the course that wasn’t beat up, wasn’t whooped out, so attrition was definitely a big factor there. That’s where we got a lot of our track position there on lap four, a lot of people fell out there lap three and four, so we just played it smooth, consistent, conservative, and it paid off today.”

Prior to his puncture, Piplic had been leading Anderson by roughly twenty seconds and the Class 10 of Tyler Mills in the overall. Mills was the first car to reach the finish, though Anderson beat him by a minute. Abraham Gutierrez arrived shortly after Mills, coming up four minutes short.

Piplic salvaged a fourth overall and second in UTV Pro Open. While Terrana was unable to repeat the overall, he still topped the UTV Pro class ahead of Tim Fitzpatrick, Matt Burroughs, and Anderson’s brother RJ Anderson.

“The track sure is rough, it got super rough,” Mills commnted. “It felt good, but we just wanted to keep moving. I didn’t have any problem, we didn’t have any flats, nothing. We didn’t stop all day except for fuel and that’s it. I don’t think I passed that many cars ever in a race. There was lappers all over. Everybody got out of the way, everybody was good and we just picked our way.”

Guthrie was not the only W2RC competitor as he and some of his fellow American rally raiders skipped the championship’s Abu Dhabi Desert Challenge last week to focus on the Mint. Ricky Brabec, the Dakar Rally bike champion, and his Monster Energy Honda Rally Team colleague Skyler Howes traded in their handlebars for a steering wheel, a formula that worked to perfection when they won the UTV Pro NA class ahead of new Honda Factory Off-Road Racing driver Michael McFayden. Brabec’s girlfriend and W2RC SSV racer Sara Price, who was RJ Anderson’s team-mate in Extreme E for a brief spell in 2022, was ordered to switch to the UTV Pro class at the last minute because her Can-Am Maverick did not meet regulation for UTV Pro Stock and finished twelfth alongside Cameron Steele. The Brabec/Howes tandem narrowly beat Price and Steele in the overall by one minute.

Unlike the Unlimited race on Saturday that is predominantly filled with trucks, the Limited race boasts a variety of vehicles like Beetles in Class 11 and even military vehicles. The latter was split into Vintage Military and Modern Military categories, with the former’s winner Alex Hernandez in an AM General Humvee. United States Army contractor Flyer Defense supplied a quartet of General Dynamics Flyer 72s for personnel from the Army’s 5th Special Forces Group, which competed in Modern Military against the likes of Polaris RZRs and Storm SRTVs.

Matt Trainham, the director of vehicle testing for Rivian, completed the race in an electric Rivian R1T.

The race was held a week after the Nitrocross season finale in nearby Las Vegas. Faces from that weekend who appeared Friday included Blake Wilkey, winner of both Nitrocross Baja Bugs and the Mint’s Class 11, and UFC Hall of Famer Donald “Cowboy” Cerrone, finishing eleventh in UTV Pro Open. Cerrone will also run the Unlimited event.

Concurrent with the Limited race, Nic Whetstone crushed Unlimited qualifying as the only truck with a time below four minutes; defending champion Eric Hardin qualified third. Kyle Jergensen, the 2022 Mint 400 Unlimited winner, topped Group 1 qualifying for Unlimited Truck SPEC trucks.

The Potts family had a difficult Friday when Carib Potts flipped his Class 10 in the Limited race, then Cole Potts rolled his Unlimited Truck in qualifying. Cole will consequently start at the back on Saturday.

In spite of his accident, Carib still mustered a top ten in Class 10 in ninth, albeit completing just a lap. The same could not be said for twenty-three others in the Limited race who failed to reach the finish. UTV Pro Stock drivers Kenneth Clifton, Erik Reynolds, Jesse Sword, and Loni Unser were disqualified for illegal exhausts and other disallowed components for the class. Loni, daughter of Johnny Unser and Pikes Peak International Hill Climb competitor, was making her Mint 400 début and had been leading the class until a “string of bad luck” hit on the final lap.

Limited class winners

Class	Overall Finish	Number	Driver of Record	Total Time
4600 Stock	88	4623	John Williams	8:37:13.614*
Class 1/2-1600	38	1676	Travis Reese	9:58:50.050
Class 10	2	1008	Tyler Mills	7:36:44.561
Class 11	79	1157	Blake Wilkey	7:50:43.826*
Class 12	20	1206	Sammy Ehrenberg	8:49:31.567
Class 1450	40	1450	Don Beaumont	10:01:20.867
Class 2000	102	2016	Davis Julian	10:39:25.502
Class 5 Unlimited	17	533	Tevon Murachanian	8:38:12.440
Class 5-1600	32	554	Raul Solano	9:33:34.122
Class 7S	83	7141	James Burman	8:20:51.453*
Class 9 Challenger	165	923	Jonathan Harstad	3:09:30.180
EV Production	171	EV100	Matt Trainham	4:04:11.412*
Gambler 500/Hooptie X Stock	168	G140	Emme Hall	3:43:57.659
Jeepspeed Challenge	107	1733	Mike Bosley	11:16:18.977
Jeepspeed Trophy	86	4725	Jeff Harmonson	8:28:24.041*
Modern Military	133	M968	Cole Johnson	6:32:31.619*
Modern Vintage	200	V300	Steve Grinter	DNF
Open Sportsman	65	8132	Kyle Washington	6:29:07.442*
Stock Production Truck Full	136	851	Chris Woo	7:18:47.696
Stock Production Truck Mini/Mid	132	7330	Chad Hall	6:18:49.454*
Trophy Lite	47	6052	Shawn Runyon	10:19:47.825
UTV Modified	67	UM930	Todd Zuccone	6:49:12.672*
UTV Pro	7	P998	Joe Terrana	7:54:17.087
UTV Pro Normally Aspirated	26	1991	Ricky Brabec	9:17:08.717
UTV Pro Open	1	PO952	Ronnie Anderson	7:35:48.525
UTV Pro Stock	41	PS998	Nicolas Evans	10:03:08.245
UTV Stock	61	U900	Max Hirn	12:45:32.371
Vintage	130	V101	Buck Vinson	6:15:21.378*
Vintage Military	136	M22X	Alex Hernandez	7:48:24.764*
Vintage Open	125	V233	John Griffin	5:26:08.761*

* – Did not complete all four laps or full distance not required for class

Unlimited qualifying results

Group 1

Position	Number	Driver of Record	Time	Margin
1	222	Kyle Jergensen	4:14.185	Leader
2	272	Troy Grabowski	4:16.845	+ 2.660
3	284	Justin “Bean” Smith	4:19.800	+ 5.615
4	205	Trey Gibbs	4:22.515	+ 8.330
5	282	Brent Fox	4:22.593	+ 8.408
6	279	Cole Hardin	4:24.558	+ 10.373
7	299	Sid Mattila	4:25.211	+ 11.026
8	201	Jason Coleman	4:25.236	+ 11.051
9	273	Jordan Brenthel	4:25.396	+ 11.211
10	219	Thor Herbst	4:27.548	+ 13.363
11	267	Bret Jeffers	4:28.015	+ 13.830
12	227	Jack Olliges	4:29.130	+ 14.945
13	211	Thomas St. Peter	4:29.567	+ 15.382
14	277	Travis Williams	4:29.923	+ 15.738
15	250	Nick Isenhouer	4:30.096	+ 15.911
16	295	Pat Gailey	4:31.214	+ 17.029
17	246	James Scully	4:31.780	+ 17.605
18	214	Donald Cerrone	4:35.157	+ 20.972
19	208	Garrett Gentry	4:36.093	+ 21.908
20	263	EJ Herbst	4:37.160	+ 22.975
21	224	Terry Householder	4:37.225	+ 23.040
22	288	Andre Laurin	4:37.269	+ 23.084
23	230	Chad Hall	4:38.918	+ 24.733
24	255	Kirk Harkey	4:39.307	+ 25.122
25	202	Neal Drickey	4:45.757	+ 31.572
26	245	Adam Castaneda	4:47.096	+ 32.911
27	254	Trevor Brain	4:48.097	+ 33.912
28	274	Shane Lewis	4:51.010	+ 36.825
29	204	Maxime Losier	4:52.341	+ 38.156
30	266	Harrison Weiss	4:52.546	+ 38.361
31	269	CJ Faison	4:56.092	+ 41.906
32	233	Josh Horschel	5:08.201	+ 54.016
33	210	Louis Horschel	5:15.228	+ 1:01.043
34	262	Lincoln Day	5:19.005	+ 1:04.819
35	212	Paul Kraus	5:23.267	+ 1:09.081
36	271	Chase Barbieri	8:13.239	+ 3:59.054

Group 2

Position	Number	Driver of Record	Class	Time	Margin
1	18	Nic Whetstone	Unlimited Truck 2WD	3:57.240	Leader
2	140	Conner McMullen	Class 1	4:05.770	+ 8.530
3	79	Eric Hardin	Unlimited Truck 2WD	4:06.028	+ 8.788
4	179	Mario Fuentes Zaragoza	Class 1	4:06.603	+ 9.363
5	32	Ryan Arciero	Unlimited Truck 2WD	4:07.008	+ 9.768
6	11	Rob MacCachren	Unlimited Truck 2WD	4:07.417	+ 10.177
7	19	Tim Herbst	Unlimited Truck 2WD	4:09.028	+ 11.788
8	24	Adam Householder	Unlimited Truck 2WD	4:12.044	+ 14.804
9	6	Christian Sourapas	Unlimited Truck 2WD	4:14.202	+ 16.962
10	97	BJ Baldwin	Unlimited Truck 2WD	4:15.461	+ 18.221
11	70	Kevin Thompson	Unlimited Truck 2WD	4:15.567	+ 18.327
12	9	Ethan Ebert	Unlimited Truck 2WD	4:17.422	+ 20.182
13	88	David Bernstein	Unlimited Truck 2WD	4:22.565	+ 25.325
14	34	Brett Comiskey	Unlimited Truck 4WD	4:24.777	+ 27.537
15	27	Steve Olliges	Unlimited Truck 2WD	4:29.220	+ 31.980
16	129	Madix Bailey	Class 1	4:34.574	+ 37.334
17	91	Alexander Wacker	Unlimited Truck 2WD	4:36.030	+ 38.790
18	111	Jay Reichert	Class 1	4:38.028	+ 40.787
19	44	Bill Apgood	Unlimited Truck 2WD	4:40.758	+ 43.518
20	13	Michael Frye	Unlimited Truck 2WD	4:46.268	+ 49.029
21	L22	Robert Malone	Unlimited Truck Legends	5:06.218	+ 1:08.978
22	60	Cole Potts	Unlimited Truck 4WD	10:35.733	+ 6:38.493
23	127	Drew Norman	Class 1	DNF	N/A
24	115	Dan Myers	Class 1	DNF	N/A
25	141	Kyle McMullen	Class 1	DNF	N/A
26	L23	Luis Saenz	Unlimited Truck Legends	DNF	N/A
27	26	Jonathan Brenthel	Unlimited Truck 4WD	DNF	N/A