Udall Tops Inaugural SCORE Baja Sur 500

Jean Turner | April 21, 2015
 
The winning Baja 500 team.

Off-road racers took on 424.5 miles of Baja California – from Cabo San Lucas to Loreto – for the first-ever running of the Bud Light SCORE Baja Sur 500. Ox Motorsports backed two teams at the inaugural event, and couldn’t have asked for a better day after going 1-2, with Colton Udall ironmanning his way to the overall win ahead of the second-place duo of Mark Samuels and Ray Dal Soglio. (Photo courtesy Ox Motorsports)

 “This inaugural Bud Light SCORE Baja Sur 500 was an awesome experience. I ironmanned this race and that’s the biggest milestone for me,” Udall said, adding, “I just wish I had a helicopter because there was a lot of scary stuff out there.”

Udall received a solid challenge from the Kawasaki-mounted duo of Ricky Brabec and Justin Morgan. But the battle ended prematurely due to a reported mechanical failure on the 1x Kawasaki.

“One awesome moment in the race for me was when Justin Morgan and I were racing just after La Paz,” Udall said. “We battled back and forth. We had the bikes wide open. It was a battle for the power of the dust. I’m happy that I’m here and I didn’t put the bike on the ground once.”

Udall had a very specific advantage in the race; a four-gallon tank on his Ox Motorsports Honda CRF450X allowed him to ride longer stretches between pits through the fast and wide-open terrain.

Brabec and Morgan failed to reach the finish, allowing Samuels and Del Soglio to collect runner-up honors. “This race was fun, but a little scary,” Samuels said. “It was really fast with a couple of technical sections. We were running high speeds for so long and there was a lot of local traffic and animals on the course.”

Third overall (motorcycles) went to Class 40 winners Collie Potter, Sterlyn Rigsby and Dave Glass. The team of Mark Winkelman, Kevin Murphy and Morgan Crawford topped the 30+ Class while Kevin Daniels topped the Ironman class.

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Jean Turner | Contributor

A former staffer at Cycle News, Turner continues to contribute to the website and magazine as a columnist and someone we can count on to whip up a few thousand words on an off-road race when needed.