Alan Ampudia’s quest to repeat his SCORE Trophy Truck championship is off to a good start, though it wasn’t easy as he had to fend off an onslaught of trucks for his second straight San Felipe 250 win.

Although San Felipe is the shortest race on the calendar, the 4-wheeler overall traded hands repeatedly throughout the 250.06 miles. Pole winner Tavo Vildósola paced the field early on but was being outpaced by Justin Lofton, while Ampudia quickly moved from his fourth-place qualifying spot past Luke McMillin and Bryce Menzies into second; Menzies, who battled with Ampudia for the 2024 class title, had fallen back due to a broken CV joint that left him in two-wheel drive. Through the first checkpoint, the top six trucks were separated by just four minutes.

Vildósola pitted soon after to surrender the physical lead to Ampudia but the top spot for corrected time to the #70 of Kevin Thompson and Harley Letner. Ampudia and McMillin kept within range on time before blasting by, setting up a battle between the most recent SF 250 winners.

“This was a really rough day, literally everything happened,” Ampudia told La Voz de la Frontera at the finish. “We were in a battle with Tavo. We caught up with him after the first checkpoint. Later at our pit, there was a problem on one side with a tire; I don’t know what happened, but Luke passed us, then we were behind Tavo. We passed him back, I think he was flat, and then we just got on Luke’s dust. Everything was a mess.

“At the end, going through Puertecitos, I had a flat and thought, ‘That’s it.’ But then [Luke] also had a flat. The two of us changed our tires and he took off first so I was like, ‘I have to catch up with him.’ We pushed as hard as we could in the last five or ten miles.”

McMillin beat Ampudia back to San Felipe, but his time of 3:56:01.998 just narrowly lost to Ampudia by 48 seconds.

Rob MacCachren was just 11 seconds back of McMillin for third and 13 seconds ahead of Toby Price and Paul Weel. Thompson and Letner lost a serpentine belt five miles from the finish (the same had occurred to Price in qualifying), and settled for fifth as the last truck with a time below four hours.

“Even if he might have beat me, it was a really cool battle and I had a lot of fun,” Ampudia added.

Vildósola’s father Gus was the only driver to top his class in TT qualifying on Thursday then win on Saturday, beating David Payne and Larry Roeseler by 28 minutes for the Legends win. Apdaly Lopez, who was quickest among Spec trucks, was knocked out by mechanical issues just 17 miles in while 2WD leader Ryan Daniel was unable to take the start.

Robby Gordon’s highly anticipated return to SCORE was ruined by a broken tie rod after 25 miles, well before his son Max could take over at RM 60. Mint 400 winner Adam Householder couldn’t complete the race either.

Legends driver Shawn Runyon was on the verge of the same fate when he hit a rock that launched his truck into an awkward landing, destroying his lower control arm. Fortunately, his team successfully got the part repaired and he brought it home fifth in class.

Cameron Steele scored his first class victory since the 2018 Baja 1000 when he cleared Chad Broughton by five minutes to win the inaugural race for the Trophy Truck 2WD class.

Brock Heger’s legendary UTV win streak continued with his sixth victory in a row, albeit with a few lucky breaks. He had been leading when a technical problem struck 49 miles in, dropping him to third. RZR Factory Racing teammate and last year’s San Felipe UTV winner Cayden MacCachren seized the opportunity to pull ahead, but a mechanical gremlin showed up in the final ten miles to knock him out of the race.

Heger regained the lead to win Pro UTV Open and be the fastest UTV outright. Phil Blurton from rival Can-Am was the second UTV, 16 minutes behind and tops for Forced Induction entries.

Justin Morgan, who won the 2018 and 2019 San Felipe 250s on a bike, made the switch to driving UTVs with RZR Factory Racing but his race was cut short by a DNF. Baja Bug star Blake Wilkey also had his UTV debut abruptly end when he and Magdiel Soto collided as they merged lines, sending the former into multiple rolls and destroying the latter’s rear. UTV Open classmate Mike Cafro was also knocked out by a rollover after getting together with Roberto Romo Jr.

While crashes and broken components were the threat of the day for the four-wheel machines, their two-wheeled counterparts’ biggest concern was an empty fuel tank. Miscalculations or errors in fuel saving caused more than a handful of riders to run out.

Eric Holt was the biggest victim of this when his #15X went dry while he was leading the race. He was then disqualified because a chase motorcycle went backward on the course while going over to refuel it. Pro Moto 60 rider John Vander Lans also received a disqualification for going backward, leaving Harold Harris’ #60X as the only team left in the class.

The #100X of Armando Ortiz started smoking right off the start, forcing the team to spend two hours trying to get it fixed. Although he rejoined the race afterward, he was too far back to make it in time and called it a day at the first checkpoint.

Other bike DNFs included the very unique entry of Ty McPherson, who raced a modified 2016 Harley-Davidson Street 750 nicknamed the “Baja XG”. Harleys have a deep history in Baja (Roeseler winning the 1975 Baja 500 on one alongside Bruce Ogilvie), but have not been used as much in recent years as the demands from desert racing outpace their development; still, there are instances today such as the Mint 400’s Hooligan class for Sportsters and the Pan America 1250 in rally raid. McPherson’s model has a different front end and swing arm from the original model, while the engine is fully stock save for the exhaust. Although he was the first Harley rider to race the 250, he unfortunately only made it roughly 18 miles before retiring.

With Holt out of the picture, Mark Samuels’ #7X was pursued by reigning Pro Moto Unlimited champion Arturo Salas Jr. Led by Tyler Lynn with Ryan Surrat and anchored by Salas’ former teammate Carter Klein, the #7X ran a flawless race to score the overall win. It is Samuels’ fourth San Felipe title after claiming three in a row from 2017 to 2019.

Justin Montesalvo, a Finke Desert Race veteran from Australia, finished 11th in TT in his SCORE debut.

Class winners

4-Wheel

Class	Overall Finish	Number	Driver of Record	Total Time
Class 1	16	168	Adam Pfankuch	4:29:49.947
Class 1/2-1600	71	1625	Eric Pavolka	6:22:22.125
Class 5 Unlimited	66	500	Eli Yee	6:08:37.426*
Class 5-1600	DNF	N/A	No Finishers	DNF
Class 7	52	702	Dan Chamlee	5:31:48.849*
Class 10	34	1000	Francisco Vera	5:00:30.624
Class 11	136	1103	Rafael Castillo	9:57:23.713*
Hammer Truck	108	4493	Andrew McLaughlin	7:41:49.592*
Heavy Metal	DNF	N/A	No Finishers	DNF
Pro Stock UTV	59	3908	Scott Bergen	5:48:14.284*
Pro UTV Forced Induction	29	2944	Phil Blurton	4:53:35.882
Pro UTV Normally Aspirated	76	1957	Joe Bolton	6:28:59.118
Pro UTV Open	21	1896	Brock Heger	4:37:47.435
Sportsman Truck	DNF	N/A	No Finishers	DNF
Sportsman Unlimited Buggy (Class 1500)	142	1812	Pedro A. Robles	10:13:30.329*
Sportsman UTV	135	1550	Cesar Quirarte	9:55:48.624*
Trophy Truck	1	1	Alan Ampudia	3:55:13.133
Trophy Truck 2WD	11	16T	Cameron Steele	4:18:02.302
Trophy Truck Legends	9	1L	Gus Vildósola	4:10:54.252*
Trophy Truck Spec	10	297	Jorge Sampietro	4:14:20.634

Moto

Class	Overall Finish	Number	Rider of Record	Total Time
Pro Moto 30	6	308X	Jason Alosi	6:13:17.697*
Pro Moto 40	5	400X	Shane Esposito	6:05:53.509
Pro Moto 50	33	500X	Mike Prunty	8:41:54.486*
Pro Moto 60	26	600X	Harold Harris	7:48:02.974
Pro Moto Ironman	8	715X	Larry Serna	6:20:43.660*
Pro Moto Limited	7	127X	Bhaskar Ramani	6:13:54.751*
Pro Moto Unlimited	1	7X	Tyler Lynn	4:49:03.529
Pro Quad	4	1A	Estevan Ramirez Jr.	5:55:38.513
Sportsman Moto	23	211X	Filiberto Garcia	7:37:30.502*
Sportsman Quad	14	116A	Mario Navarrete	6:50:28.603*

Featured image credit: via Alan Ampudia