SCORE Journal - The Official Publication of SCORE Off-Road Racing
Issue link: https://read.uberflip.com/i/1522709
TEAM AUSTRALIA WINS! Toby Price And Paul Weel Get Their Perfect Day By Stuart Bourdon Photos by Get Some Photo Toby Price (driver of record) and co-driver Paul Weel had one of those “perfect” days during the BFGoodrich Tires 56th SCORE Baja 500. Everything went according to plan. They had no downtime and were able to blaze through 482.91 miles of incredibly rough Baja terrain for first Overall and first in the SCORE Trophy Truck class. We talked to team owner and co-driver, Paul Weel, about the team’s dramatic first win in the 2024 SCORE World Desert Championship Series. “Our day started off well because Toby qualified the car first. That gave us clean air and helped us dictate the race right off the start,” Weel said. “Things were going great until the front drive in our Mason AWD truck went out around mile 230. We only had rear drive from there on, which made the truck a little slippery, but Toby kept it on the track with a good pace and handed it over to me in good shape where I was waiting at mile 360. “We had Alan Ampudia right behind us from the start, and he pushed us hard during the first part of the race. But Alan had some flats, Christopher Poolvorde and Bryce Menzies also had some issues, and Tavo Vildosola had flats too. When we crossed over to the Pacific side, we were so far away from our crew that we had no radio communication for a while, so we didn’t know if we had lost time or made up time as I headed toward Uruapan. I started pushing pretty hard, and when we finally got back on the radio, we learned there was about a three-minute split.” The only real trouble Weel ran into (so to speak) came late in the race. “I had a little incident with a spectator pickup parked in the middle of the track going up a hill. I had to go around it, and that was a little bit of a hairy moment. I clipped the front of it as we came back onto the track. Fortunately, we didn’t have a flat or any damage from that encounter.” Weel told us, “Qualifying first, being first on the road, and not having any flats helped keep us up front. But I have to say, we also had good pit stops, and that made a big difference. We had the Menzies guys do all our pit stops and that worked out very well for us. They are so quick and professional.” We asked Paul why he and Toby, who are both already very successful in Australia and events such as the Dakar Rally, were so fascinated with racing SCORE Trophy Trucks in Baja. “I had done some off-road racing stadium trucks from the Mickey Thompson series in Australia but didn’t really do any for almost 10 years. Then I went out to our big desert race – the Finke – and saw Toby come through in a Trophy Truck. I thought I needed to get one of these, it looks like fun and bought Toby’s truck from him. “Not long after that, I decided to create an Australian team with Toby and run some races in the States and Baja in a few different trucks. We had some success and some not-so-successful races, and that’s when I decided to have Mason build a brand-new truck. We wanted to race with and against guys like the McMillins, Menzies, and Tavo. We wanted to test ourselves against the best. Fortunately, we ended up cracking the code and getting everything right this race. We are even more motivated now that we’ve tasted how good racing in Baja can be.” SJ