- Third-generation desert racer Luke McMillin won the season-opening SCORE San Felipe 250 in the bucolic seaside resort town of San Felipe on the Sea of Cortez.
- The race is the first of four in the SCORE 2022 calendar, followed by the Baja 500, Baja 400 and the grandaddy of them all the Baja 1000.
- McMillin’s grandfather Corky started racing in the desert at the 1976 Baja 1000 and now there are McMillins spread out all over the desert, often winning races.
Lucky Luke McMillin played leapfrog with Bryce Menzies in a Trophy-Truck-tag-team-for-the-lead that lasted 100 miles across the Baja desert, with McMillin taking the lead for good and winning the King Shocks 35th SCORE San Felipe 250 on April 2.
“Luke McMillin, 29, drove solo to power his stunning No. 83 Mason-built all-wheel drive Chevy 1500 to lead the third-largest number of starters in race history to an inspiring error-free, penalty-free winning time of four hours, 25 minutes and 21 seconds over the sun-drenched, rock-filled, silt-strewn 277.00 miles for a remarkable average speed of 62.63 miles per hour,” said SCORE in its post-race release.
McMillin and his co-driver celebrate atop the truck at the finish line in San Felipe after winning the season-opening SCORE San Felipe 250.
McMillin Racing
Even though the course was the shortest of SCORE’s four-race all-Baja championship series, it was still a tough go, with silt so deep it even trapped previous winner Rob MacCachren, and many other racers, during qualifying.
McMillin’s Chevy was one of 42 entries in the marquee Trophy Truck class, in an overall field of 273 starters.
When the green flag dropped it was #1 qualifier Menzies in his Ford Raptor and #2 qualifier Justin Lofton in front of McMillin, all three in Trophy Trucks, who were at the front. McMillin got by Lofton early on in the 277-mile race and reeled in Menzies in the final 100 miles. The pair leapfrogged the lead a few times. First Menzies had to stop to change a flat and McMillin got by. Then Menzies passed McMillin when McMillin had a 30-second delay in the pits. McMillin made his final pass for the lead on a dry lake bed when Menzies had another flat.
McMillin gets some air in his Chevy Silverado 1500 Trophy Truck.
McMillin Racing
“It feels really, really good,” said McMillin at the finish line. “We ran clean today, and had no issues at all. We just kept moving all day. We picked off Lofton (Justin, No. 41) going up north and then there was some back and forth with Bryce (Menzies, No. 7) on a couple of occasions. We passed them on the lake bed when they were changing a tire. We had a little hiccup in our pit and they got by us. We were 30 seconds behind him and we passed them as they pulled over. It was just cat and mouse.”
Menzies finished two minutes and eight seconds back in second place.
“We started up front and tried to just play it smartly,” said Menzies. “I heard early that Justin (Lofton, No. 41) had gotten a flat and Luke (McMillin, No. 83) got by him and that gave him a mini gap. I knew it would be a long race with Luke. Then on the lake bed we had our left rear blown out and that allowed him to get by. We put on the pressure and chased him back down and eventually got by him, but I made a mistake, caught a rock and got a flat. Luke got by me there and we couldn’t pass him on the run. We got as close as we could. We wanted to be the first to leave and the first to return and we gave Luke everything we could, but we’ll take second and head to the SCORE Baja 500.”
This is a brochure shot of the KTM 450 SX-F ridden to victory in the motorcycle class at the San Felipe 250.
KTM
In the motorcycle class, victory went to the three-rider team lead by Bolivia’s legendary athlete and Dakar Rally veteran Juan Carlos Salvatierra, who teamed up with Mexico’s Arturo Salas and the USA’s Shane Logan for the two-wheeled win. Salas started, Logan rode the second section, and Salvatierra (40 years old!) rode to the finish. The trio shared a KTM 450SX-F.
It didn’t go easily, of course. After Logan crashed, Salvatierra rode the final section of the race course with no seat.
“Arturo started really well and built a good gap for us,” said Salvatierra. “Shane had a crash and lost the seat and some other parts and handed me a half-bike, but we made it. The final section was really fun and enjoyable.”
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Other racers had stories, too.
“We had to change a drive line out there that slowed us down quite a bit,” said Tim Herbst, who finished fifth in the TT class. “But other than that, we ran pretty well. I think Pat hit a tree and we took the roof off when we changed drivers, but that wasn’t a big deal.”
“We pretty much hit every cactus there was in the desert,” said sixth-place Trophy Truck finisher Eric Hustead. “They’re on our back wall and all over the floor. It was miserable but we had fun.”
“Even with the roof off, it was very hot today,” said Gary Magness, who finished ninth. “I think we had a pretty good finish. I had to replace all the tires and had some issues with cactuses too. It was a very fun race.”
“We’re on our third drive shaft, so what can we do?” lamented Kyle Jergensen, who won the Mint 400 just weeks before and won the Trophy Truck race at King of the Hammers before that. “Every time we get in any whoops, it just shuts the drive shaft off. But besides that, it was really smooth.”
“We ran out of gas just ten miles away from the finish line,” said Christian Sourapas, who finished 20thin the Trophy Truck Spec class. “We sat for one hour and that killed us.
The finishing order of the Baja 250 dictated the starting order of the next race on the SCORE calendar, the BFGoodrich Tires SCORE Baja 500, June 1-5, across the peninsula in the seaside port city of Ensenada. That will be followed by the Baja 400 and the grandaddy of them all the BFGoodrich Tires SCORE Baja 1000 Nov. 15-20. See you there, perhaps?
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