Price/Weel just fall short of back-to-back Bajas
The quest of Australian duo Toby Price and Paul Weel to repeat their Baja 500 success came so close to fruition.
After more than eight hours of action, the battle for the 57th Baja 500 went down to the wire.
Weel and Price hit the lead, but lost time at the death and fell agonisingly short by less than a minute.
They were edged out by Alan Ampudia, who put the #1 in P1 after 8h39m34.422s.
He emerged just 54s clear of Price as their battle for glory in the SCORE International Off-Road Racing event was a nail-biter.
Price and Weel took a breakthrough win in the Baja 500 event last year in the #46 and gave it everything in their pursuit of back-to-back glories.
They hit the lead at differing stages of the rally as Ampudia battled with loss of front wheel drive and a deep brake pedal at points.
Price’s advantage grew out to five minutes until the finale at the coast where Ampudia “sent it” and was “super excited” to steal the victory.
However, Price was still really pleased with the team’s efforts.
“It’s tough at the end there, but we fell just a little bit short,” he said.
“My section was good. We had a really good run and I got by everybody and started pushing out front and tried to open a bit of a gap for Paul to have a little bit of a buffer.
“We climbed out and unfortunately just wasn’t quite enough. All in all, we’re stoked we’re here.
“We’ve had a really good run and Paul’s done a great job and the whole team’s done a great job so to be at the finish line, that’s a win any day of the week.
“We’re happy with our efforts and a big thank you to all our team and all our crew.
“The next one is the SCORE Baja 400. so we always look to the next one and it’s good.”
The Baja 400 is on September 10-14.
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