Photo by Leif Bergerson via Pexels
Luke McMillin has won the Baja 1000 three times. He has won the San Felipe 250 three times. He won the Baja 500 back in June. Until Sunday morning, the Baja 400 was the hole in the résumé — the one SCORE race in Baja that kept refusing to cooperate.
It cooperated in 8 hours, 40 minutes and 50 seconds.
McMillin took the overall win at the 7th SCORE Baja 400 in the No. 83 Mason AWD Ford Raptor, averaging 48.78 mph across 423.42 miles of Baja California and beating Bryce Menzies’ No. 7 by 2 minutes and 32 seconds. Kevin Thompson’s No. 70 was third, another 4:55 back. With that, McMillin has now won all four SCORE Baja events — the Grand Slam — and every SCORE race run so far in 2026, according to SCORE’s official race report.
“I’m very excited that we’re three for three this season… we were able to pull off the win. So I’m very, very happy and proud of the entire team.”
Three for three, with the 59th Baja 1000 still to come November 9-15 out of Los Cabos. Nobody needs help doing that math.
The number SCORE would rather you skip past
The Trophy Truck 2WD class winners — Maverick and Chasen Gaunt in the No. 42T Chevy Silverado — crossed at 9:52:19. Same 423 miles, same day, same dirt. That is one hour, eleven minutes and twenty-nine seconds behind McMillin, or roughly 14 percent slower over the course of a single race.
SCORE created the Trophy Truck 2WD class for the 2025 season and debuted it at the San Felipe 250, with a rule that says the quiet part out loud: AWD trucks are not permitted in it at any SCORE race. Two-wheel-drive teams got a class of their own because they had stopped winning in the premier one, and a separate trophy beat watching them quietly disappear.
The pattern holds up under a second look. The 2025 Baja 1000 overall went to Christopher Polvoorde and Bryce Menzies in a No. 94 Ford Raptor Mason AWD. The 2026 San Felipe 250, Baja 500 and Baja 400 all went to McMillin in a Mason AWD. Carlos “Apdaly” López even won Trophy Truck Spec — a cost-controlled class with a sealed engine formula — in 9:20:22, which beat the fastest unlimited two-wheel-drive truck in the race by nearly 32 minutes.
What an AWD trophy truck actually is
It is worth understanding what that drivetrain sits inside, because this is not a Raptor with a transfer case bolted underneath it.
McMillin’s truck uses a Mason Motorsports AWD chassis under a Walker Industries carbon fiber body. The engine is a 555-cubic-inch big block Chevy from Kroyer Racing Engines making 1,100 horsepower and 850 lb-ft — more than the 1,000 hp Shelby stuffs into a street-legal Raptor R. That runs through an X-Trac five-speed sequential with paddles, into a Mason Motorsports transfer case and front differential. Fox shocks tuned by SDG Suspension give 24 inches of travel up front and 30 inches in the rear, and it rolls on Method Forged 202 beadlocks wearing 40-inch BFGoodrich KR3s.
The advantage is not launch traction. It is silt. Baja’s silt beds are the most speed-destroying surface in the sport, and a two-wheel-drive truck has to slow down, pick a line and hope it keeps moving. An all-wheel-drive truck claws through on all four corners and carries momentum exactly where the other guy is bleeding it away. Stretch that across 423 miles and you get 71 minutes. Ford has been learning a version of the same lesson on the other side of the world, where its Raptor program took second and third at the 2026 Dakar Rally.
Polaris bet $50,000 on its own factory team and lost
The other story out of Ensenada belongs to Wayne Matlock.
In July, Polaris announced the SCORE Challenge: $50,000 to any UTV racer who could beat all four RZR Factory Racing entries and take the UTV Overall win, at the Baja 400 or, if the money went unclaimed, the Baja 1000. Open to any manufacturer. It was a confident piece of theater from a company that had just swept the UTV podium at the Baja 500.
“The goal of the SCORE Challenge is to bring more of the top racers and manufacturers back to Baja and create even more opportunities for head-to-head competition at the highest level.”
It worked, arguably too well. Matlock won Pro UTV Open and the UTV Overall in the No. 1871 at 9:54:28, beat the factory roster outright, and collected the money.
The detail that keeps this from being a straight faceplant: he did it in a Polaris RZR Pro R. Polaris wrote a $50,000 check to be beaten by its own product, which is either the cheapest advertising the marketing department bought this year or the most expensive, depending on which department you ask. The Pro R is also a machine you can walk into a dealer and buy — we have already gone through what one actually costs to own — which makes this a rare case of a Baja-winning vehicle having a window sticker.
The rest of the scoreboard
164 teams started and 102 finished, a 62 percent completion rate that reads as respectable in Baja and alarming anywhere else. The entry list came from 23 states plus Puerto Rico, Mexico, Argentina, Australia, Canada, Denmark, England, France, Germany, Japan, New Zealand, Scotland and Spain.
Baja is still Baja, and the risk is not theoretical for racers or spectators. This one went off without that kind of headline, which is worth saying out loud.
November is the one that matters now. McMillin needs Los Cabos to go four for four, and Polaris needs somebody — anybody — to stop taking its money.
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