The 2026 SCORE San Felipe 250 opened the SCORE World Desert Championship season exactly the way San Felipe always does — with a brutal 281-mile course, heavy attrition across the field, and a Pro UTV Open class decided by execution as much as outright speed.
When the dust settled, Polaris RZR Factory Racing had locked out the entire Pro UTV Open podium. Brock Heger took the UTV overall and his second consecutive San Felipe 250 win in the RZR Pro R Factory, ahead of teammate Joe Terrana in second and Dallas Gonzalez in third. The result extended Polaris' winning streak at the San Felipe 250 to three consecutive years.
With Round 1 complete, Polaris opened the season with early momentum heading toward the Baja 500. The RZR Pro R Factory opened the 2026 SCORE season with another major victory and remained one of the benchmark platforms in Pro UTV Open competition.
Who Won the 2026 SCORE San Felipe 250 Pro UTV Open Class?
Brock Heger won the 2026 SCORE San Felipe 250 Pro UTV Open class and the UTV overall in his Polaris RZR Pro R Factory, completing the course in 5:21:59.301 after starting eighth off the line. Heger led a Polaris RZR Pro R Factory podium sweep, with teammate Joe Terrana second and Dallas Gonzalez third. The race opened the 2026 SCORE World Desert Championship season and marked Heger's second consecutive San Felipe 250 UTV win.
Prerunning and Race Setup
Teams arrived in San Felipe early in race week to prerun the course, finalize suspension setups, and prepare for one of the most demanding races on the SCORE calendar.
The 281-mile San Felipe loop is a known mix of high-speed wash sections, massive whoops, sharp rock, and wide-open dry lake beds. The course rewards drivers who can read the terrain and pace themselves over distance, and it punishes anyone who pushes too hard early.
A Stacked Pro UTV Open Field
The Pro UTV Open class continues to be the most visible UTV category in SCORE racing, and the 2026 San Felipe field reflected that.
Polaris RZR Factory Racing brought a multi-car effort built around the RZR Pro R Factory, supported by additional Polaris-backed entries in Pro UTV Open and the wider UTV field. Can-Am ran across multiple UTV classes as well, with strong factory and privateer presence.
San Felipe assigns starting positions by random draw, which adds a layer of unpredictability that the rest of the season doesn't reproduce. This year, Heger drew eighth off the line — deep enough in the pack that traffic, visibility, and dust would all factor heavily in the early miles.
Race Day Across San Felipe
Once the green flag dropped, the Pro UTV Open class moved out into a course that delivered exactly what its reputation promised.
The whoops tested suspension and driver discipline. The rock sections punished anything fragile. The high-speed flats demanded total commitment with limited visibility through dust. Attrition built quickly across multiple classes as the day went on.
Heger worked through the field methodically rather than forcing the pace. Starting eighth, he picked off positions over the opening sections without overdriving, letting the RZR Pro R Factory do the work on terrain it was built for. Terrana, who started fifth, settled into a clean, mistake-free rhythm and held his pace through the brutal middle stretches.
Pit Stops and Race Support
San Felipe is a one-day, one-loop race, but pit execution still mattered. Fuel stops, tire inspections, and quick service work all had to happen without losing positions to teams running consistent pace.
At this level, the difference between finishing on the podium and finishing fourth often comes down to how clean the pit work is and how well the chase team executes on a course that gives crews very little margin.
Heger Doubles Down for the Pro UTV Open Win
Heger crossed the line minutes ahead of teammate Joe Terrana to take the Pro UTV Open class win and the UTV overall.
It's his second consecutive San Felipe 250 victory and his latest result in what has been an extended run of overall UTV wins for Polaris RZR Factory Racing across SCORE events. The 8th-place starting position made the drive more notable — picking lines, managing visibility, and staying out of trouble through long sections of dust paid off over the course of the race.
Behind him, Terrana delivered a breakout drive in his first podium with the RZR Factory Racing team, finishing second from a fifth-place start in the No. 1898 RZR Pro R Factory.
Third place went to Dallas Gonzalez, whose result is worth a closer look. Gonzalez had roughly a week between receiving the brand-new RZR Pro R Factory and lining up at the start, with very limited shake-down miles before the green flag. Completing the race on the podium under those conditions speaks to both the driver and the platform.
2026 San Felipe 250 Pro UTV Open Podium
Official Pro UTV Open class results:
Top 5 Pro UTV Open Finishers
| Pos. | Driver | Vehicle | Time |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Brock Heger | Polaris RZR Pro R Factory | 5:21:59.301 |
| 2 | Joe Terrana | Polaris RZR Pro R Factory | 5:24:52.599 |
| 3 | Dallas Gonzalez | Polaris RZR Pro R Factory | 5:45:29.928 |
| 4 | Cayden MacCachren | Polaris RZR Pro R Factory | 6:02:43.971 |
| 5 | Sebastian Marquez | Polaris RZR Pro R | 6:02:47.172 |
Polaris RZR Pro R machines took all five of the top spots in Pro UTV Open, with the leading Factory-platform cars filling the podium and fourth. Times shown are official corrected times, with penalty adjustments applied to several entries.
It's a 1-2-3 podium sweep in the Pro UTV Open class — a result that's harder to pull off at San Felipe than at almost any other event on the calendar, given how often the course produces mid-race attrition across factory programs.
Start Position vs Finish
San Felipe sets the Pro UTV Open start order by draw rather than a timed qualifying session, which makes the field's movement on race day the real measure of pace and execution. Heger's run was the clearest example: he turned an eighth-place start into the class win, advancing seven positions over the course of the race.
Oscar Arambula matched that climb from the other end of the field, moving from fifteenth on the line to eighth in class in the lone Can-Am inside the Pro UTV Open top ten. Cayden MacCachren gained three spots from seventh to fourth, and Kristen Matlock climbed from twelfth to seventh.
The biggest reversals came at the front of the draw. Ethan Groom drew first off the line but faded to ninth in class by the finish, and Branden Sims dropped from second on the line to sixth. David Placencia, who started fourth, fell to eleventh after a penalty. On a course this punishing, an early start position guaranteed nothing once the racing began.
UTVs Among the Overall Race Pace
Trophy Trucks still ran the fastest overall pace at the 2026 San Felipe 250, as expected. Modern Pro UTV Open platforms are now running times that place them high in the overall four-wheel order.
The RZR Pro R Factory in particular finished well into the overall order, ahead of most other four-wheel classes in the field. On a course like San Felipe, where survival matters as much as speed, that's a meaningful shift in how UTV racing fits inside the broader SCORE field.
Manufacturer Breakdown
Polaris RZR Pro R dominated Pro UTV Open from flag to flag. Polaris swept the class podium and placed nine of the top ten Pro UTV Open finishers — every classified position in the class top ten but one. Heger's winning time of 5:21:59.301 was the fastest UTV time of the race, putting the RZR Pro R Factory well up the overall four-wheel finishing order.
The lone non-Polaris entry inside the Pro UTV Open top ten was Oscar Arambula's Can-Am, which climbed from a fifteenth-place start to finish eighth in class. Can-Am's strongest UTV result of the weekend came in the separate Pro UTV Forced Induction class.
While Polaris controlled Pro UTV Open from start to finish, Can-Am stayed competitive elsewhere in the UTV field — particularly in the Pro UTV Forced Induction class.
Risq Racing's Emma Cornwell and Kaden Wells took the Pro UTV FI class win in a Can-Am, a notable result given Wells had to rebuild the program around a backup pre-runner after losing equipment to a fire earlier in the season. That kind of turnaround at San Felipe — managing fuel stops, terrain, and equipment over a 281-mile loop with limited prep time — is its own kind of result.
Across the rest of the UTV classes, both Polaris and Can-Am continue to push platform development forward. The competition between the two brands is one of the storylines that's defining the 2026 season.
Honda’s UTV presence at San Felipe was limited: Ricardo Torres ran in the Pro UTV Normally Aspirated class and did not finish. There was no significant Kawasaki or Yamaha representation near the front of the Pro UTV field.
Championship Implications
As the opening round of the 2026 SCORE World Desert Championship, the San Felipe 250 sets the season's first marker. Brock Heger's overall UTV win and the Polaris RZR Pro R Factory podium sweep hand the program the early Pro UTV Open advantage heading into the Baja 500. With a full SCORE season still ahead, the result is an early statement rather than a settled title picture — but opening the year with a class win and a 1-2-3 is the strongest possible starting position.
San Felipe Still Rewards Execution
What stood out most at the 2026 San Felipe 250 wasn't outright speed — it was how cleanly the top Polaris entries executed in conditions that broke a lot of other cars.
The whoops, the rocks, and the long high-speed stretches turned this race into a survival event as much as a sprint, and the Pro UTV Open podium reflected that. Pace mattered, but consistency and reliability mattered more.
It's the same theme that's defined desert racing at the top level for the last several years: modern UTV programs win by combining factory-grade preparation with drivers who don't make mistakes when the terrain gives them every opportunity to.
Looking Ahead to the Baja 500
Polaris leaves San Felipe with the UTV overall, a clean Pro UTV Open podium sweep, and momentum heading into the next round of the SCORE World Desert Championship.
The team's next race is the 58th SCORE Baja 500, scheduled for June 3–7, 2026. The Baja 500 brings a longer, more technical course than San Felipe and historically a deeper field at the front, which will test whether Polaris can extend the current run of UTV results across a different kind of race.
At DoubleZero Powersports, we support racers, builders, and weekend riders with curated Polaris RZR Pro R and Pro R Factory take-off parts, along with a growing selection of UTV performance parts, lighting, suspension, and accessories for Polaris, Can-Am, Honda, Kawasaki, and other off-road platforms.
The Takeaway
San Felipe rarely hands anything out. This year, the Polaris RZR Factory Racing team showed up with a program built to absorb everything the course threw at it and came away with the result that reflected that preparation.
Heger's back-to-back overall, Terrana's breakout podium, and Gonzalez's third-place drive on a brand-new car are three different versions of the same story: at this level of UTV racing, races are won by execution.
With the Baja 500 up next, the season is just getting started.