Last night, we did it. We crossed the finish line and took home the Class 3 win at the San Felipe 250.
When I used to talk about Baja, my voice probably had the reverence of someone recalling a childhood myth.
Growing up in Southern California, I’d go down to Mexico and Ensenada all the time. I’d see the trophy trucks and the class one cars, and my mind was just blown. My biggest inspiration was the documentary "Dust to Glory."
For years, I wanted to be able to say I drove an entire Baja course. That was the ultimate goal.
I didn't come from a racing family. I had zero off-road racing experience outside of video games. But I had a conviction — maybe a stubborn, unreasonable one — that I could will a wrecked 2023 Bronco Black Diamond and a crew of volunteers into a real race team.
If you followed our journey last year, you know how that started. I bought a rollover Bronco with a manual transmission and 17,000 miles on it from a salvage yard. I straightened bent metal by hand in my garage, swapped out panels, and leaned heavily on the Bronco community.
We took that truck to the 2025 Baja 1000. It was a 36-hour odyssey of torrential rain, hallucinating from exhaustion, losing our instrument cluster, and driving the final miles on a flat tire. We crossed the finish line half-blind and hypothermic, only to be handed a DNF due to time limits missing the official win by just a few minutes.
I shrugged it off then and said, “It is what it is. We finished.” But deep down, it lit a fire. I learned that I was more resilient than I thought, and that this factory-engine Bronco could take a massive beating and keep going.
That DNF wasn't an ending. It was a beginning.
My navigator, Austin Gillis, and I made a pact: we aren't just coming back to finish. We are coming back to win.
We are committing to compete all year in the 2026 SCORE off-road series in Mexico, using every single race to build toward our ultimate goal — returning to the SCORE Baja 1000 to compete for and win the Class 3 championship.
Austin flies F-16s for the Air Force, and I fly Black Hawks for the National Guard. We communicate with the exact same cadence and military precision, and out in the desert, that shared background is our greatest weapon.
San Felipe was the first proving ground for our 2026 campaign, and true to its reputation, it refused to hand us anything easily. The course is notorious for its brutal speed and punishing terrain, and it threw everything it had at us.
During the race, we had to fight through a mechanical issue with our fuel pump that threatened to shut us down entirely. We suffered two flat tires out in the desert. At one point, we got stuck in a terrible spot, bleeding precious time as we fought to get the Bronco free.
But our team didn't quit. Our all-volunteer pit crew — made up entirely of friends I met on Bronco forums and at meet-ups — operated flawlessly. They looked and acted like a pro pit, keeping us in the fight when everything was going wrong.
Despite the fuel pump, the flats, and getting stuck, Austin and I kept pushing. We chased the clock relentlessly, and last night, we crossed the San Felipe finish line with exactly 40 minutes to spare.
This time, there was no time adjustment. There was no DNF. We secured the Class 3 victory.
Doing this in a garage-built salvage Bronco with a team of friends still feels surreal. But as I hold this first-place trophy, I know one thing for certain: we aren't just guys who want to race Baja anymore. We are Baja racers.
The 2026 SCORE series has officially started, and winning San Felipe was just step one.
Now, we're taking this momentum through the rest of the year, all the way to the Baja 1000. We are coming for that Class 3 crown. See you at the next starting line.
RJ Zanon is a Ford Bronco Baja 1000 driver.
