Disqualifications are a messy affair in motorsports, and doubly when it involves a fan favorite.

Yeah, you know where this is going.

Everybody loves Toby Price, and rightly so. The guy’s a two-time Dakar Rally champion, a Finke legend, a Baja 500 winner, and by all accounts a swell guy.

So when he got disqualified from the San Felipe 250 for stacking rocks on the course, one can’t exactly blame people for taking his side. It’s inconceivable that someone like him would commit an offense that damaging, both to other drivers and to his career. Heck, even in the viral video, those confronting him can be heard expressing shock.

Having said that, when Fishgistics—who loved Price to the point of considering him an honorary American at Dakar—starts getting attacked in his DMs and media outlets have their integrity (us included) questioned, it’s obvious emotions are getting in the way of logic.

With the heaviest of sighs, let’s try to clear the air.

The story (as publicly known)

You’ve heard the saga enough times by this point. If you haven’t, here’s the shimmy.

Price was pre-running on Friday the day before the race when the recorded confrontation occurred. Those filming were part of another team setting up an emergency pit nearby when they spotted rocks and branches on the racing line; as they went up course, they came across Price. While Price is the only one seen, navigator Brent Bauman and others were also there as they were riding along in Price’s four-seater Can-Am.

He, fellow #46 driver Paul Weel, and Bauman raced as usual on Saturday, finishing eighth in Trophy Truck and 17th overall.

Online, the video gained traction. Meanwhile during the 250, Baja great Justin Morgan came across the damage to the course at Matomi Wash such as the rocks and downed trees, and shared them on his Instagram Story. While Trophy Trucks are strong, the rocks are big enough that they’re more like boulders and can easily damage or launch the vehicles like a ramp if hit at speed.

(This section was for Four-Wheelers only. Bikes and quads took a detour about 20 miles earlier.)

On Sunday, the CRB convened and ruled to disqualify him, and SCORE concurred with the verdict the next day. Bauman then resigned from Team Australia while Price, despite his objections to the evidence publicly available like the video and a witness statement, confirmed he would respect the DSQ and take a hiatus from desert racing. Weel, who wasn’t involved, remains the only major player at the team as he continues his internal investigation.

Hell then broke loose online and here we are.

The video doesn’t show anything!

Yes, the viral video doesn’t depict anything particularly incriminating. All that’s seen is Price ducking out from behind his pre-runner, the filming parties exclaiming their disbelief at him, and then the video cutting out. Price even mentions this in his statement. While Morgan’s video shows the damage, it doesn’t explicitly suggest Price did it.

We will also concede that our initial report is vague and could be interpreted as the video being the sole thing that got him busted.

However, and this is an important thing to emphasize, there is more to the proof than that. Just because other items are not available to the public doesn’t mean there’s nothing else. Call the Competition Review Board a cabal all you want, but they do not take their rulings lightly.

If anything, the fact that the case was over someone as respected as Price made the final judgment even tougher to deliver.

“No one wanted this,” SCORE motorcycle liaison Andy Kirker said. “They struggled with it being Toby and his team. Finally doing the right thing and upholding the rules took precedent.”

What is the CRB?

The Competition Review Board is a group of approximately 12 officials and racers, retired and active, that works with SCORE to determine penalties and hear protests. Similar to the National Motorsports Appeals Panel for NASCAR, the CRB is independent of SCORE but the sanctioning body honors verdicts adjudicated by the board.

The three-hour hearing discussed multiple pieces of evidence beyond those two clips. Price and Bauman testified, as did Morgan and those who filmed the Friday video.

“Almost a dozen off-road legends saw the evidence and heard testimony for three hours and the decision was handed down,” Kirker commented. “Toby and his crew made a bonehead move and now they have to own it.”

Jose Grijalva, the president-slash-race director of SCORE and a former San Felipe class winner, even spoke with Price and Bauman the morning of the race before participating in the hearing.

By the end, the CRB came to a unanimous decision to disqualify him.

“I can tell you every single word that they said when caught, I can tell you who the three people were in that Can-Am, so if someone has all of the facts and was there for the entire process, it was me,” Grijavla stated. “If you don’t know who the CRB members are, I’m sure you don’t, you should not just talk. The CRB members that DQ’d them are some of the most important legends ever in our sport.”

It was Bauman who did it!

Some singled out Bauman as the main figure behind the course sabotage. If anything, they surmise his resignation was him falling on the sword to cover for Price.

Jason Duncan, the navigator for overall winner Luke McMillin (who would’ve reached the affected section first as the physical leader), has said Bauman spread a rumor to other racers that Duncan was the one stacking the rocks. Duncan also admitted he felt bad for Price since he wasn’t the mastermind, but the fact that Price didn’t stop Bauman was enough that he felt betrayed.

Even if Price wasn’t the one messing with the course, he bears responsibility for his team’s actions as the Driver of Record. The DoR (or RoR—Rider of Record—for bikes) essentially doubles as the team representative, meaning they’re the main person who speaks with SCORE on matters like the conduct of personnel whether it be the navigator, chase crew, and even helicopter an drone pilots. There have been cases of competitors unknowingly getting disqualified because their chase crew far away decided to get to their next stop by going backward on the course.

So… why do it?

It’s an obvious enough question: why would anyone, much less someone of Price’s prestige, basically commit career suicide?

Morally, we wish we knew the answer to that. We’re not psychologists.

Tactically, it’s likely Price was looking at any possible option to make up for lost ground after a poor qualifying session where he was 31st quickest. While not impossible to catch up with the leaders from that far back, especially in a Trophy Truck, it’s not a situation one wants to find themselves in. Team Australia had also switched to a new Mason truck for 2026, so Price and Weel were bound to have their work cut out for them.

Besides the track “modifications”, Kirker noted Price had been trying to carve out an alternate and faster line around the sabotaged section. This is fine as long as you don’t deviate too far from the course because you run the risk of missing Virtual Checkpoints and getting penalized.

By putting these pieces together, the plan appears to be creating a bottleneck at Matomi by forcing everyone to slow down or stop for the hazards. While the leaders were jammed up, Price would take the line he burned in. Of course, because the section was cleared in time and the #46 ran into other issues along the way, it didn’t matter in the end.

“Nobody wants to believe it happened and everyone is in shock,” Kirker continued.

“I have seen many a racer doing homework and making lines to gain a competitive edge. I have witnessed the local spectators build booby traps, jumps, dig holes and bury logs to create some action or cause a crash, but I have never, in my over 50 years racing in Baja, seen a racer do both of those things.”

What is this, a Dick Dastardly plot? Probably. At the end of the day, though, Driver #46 is officially a DSQ for the 2026 San Felipe 250.

Featured image credit: Art Eugenio / Red Bull Content Pool