Jergensen Wins Again—This Time at Mint 400 Desert Race near Las Vegas

Fresh off his win last month in the King of the Hammers Desert Challenge, and after winning last year’s Best in the Desert Trick Truck championship, desert racer Kyle Jergensen won the first big off-road race of the new year when he beat out all comers at the storied Mint 400 outside Las Vegas.

Anyone who’s ever read Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas has at least heard of the Mint 400 after it was chronicled in the Hunter S. Thompson literary classic. The race began in 1968 as a promotion for Del Webb’s Mint Hotel and Casino in what is now the Old Downtown part of that resource-intensive city. The Mint 400 was a huge event back then but fell out of popularity with the sale and ultimate assumption of the Mint Hotel and Casino into the Horseshoe. The race was revived in 2008.

Jergensen was driving for Trophy Truck maker Brenthel Industries, one of the sport’s most respected makers, which is always helpful. But it was a strategy of patience that won the young driver the race.

Jergensen qualified sixth on Friday, but had to bide his time until series superstars ran into mechanical issues and dropped out one by one. First to lead and then drop out was top qualifier Justin Lofton, followed by second-place-qualifier Harley Letner. Ryan Arciero, of that famous racing family, then took over the lead for most of the race, before suffering “a heartbreaking mechanical failure” on the dry lake bed on the third lap of the four-lap race.

Last year’s winner Rob MacCachren then took over the lead, but pulled off the course with mechanical troubles—either a belt or an oil leak, depending on whom you ask.

That’s when Jergensen took the lead, despite his truck having oil pressure issues of its own. He nonetheless held on to finish first, edging out strong second-place finisher Tim Herbst, of another famous desert-racing family. Las Vegas local and famous race truck video maker BJ Baldwin was third.

“(This win) means a lot for me and my team,” Jergensen said after crossing the finish line in Primm, which sits right on the California/Nevada border. “The Brenthel team works so hard, and it’s another big team win for them. The race has to come to you, and it did. We were just kind of staying patient behind Rob (MacCachren), we saw a trail of oil, and then we saw Rob pulled over, but after that we had our bundle of issues. Once we got oil put back in it at Pit B by our crew, it ran great. There was a little excitement on the last lap, but everything else ran great.”

Tim Herbst crossed the line second, three minutes 19 seconds behind Jergensen’s winning time of 6:43:49, while Las Vegas native BJ Baldwin, who started the race alongside Jergensen in seventh, completed the podium at seven minutes 11 seconds off the winning time. Fourth-place finisher Steve Olliges also posted a time of under seven hours, a blistering pace even though many of the top racers suffered attrition throughout the event. Rob Mac got back on track and finished fifth.

“It’s a really, really long race, and you just have to let it come to you,” Herbst echoed on the podium. “That’s sort of what we did today, and we were just hoping to get some luck in the last 30 miles if Kyle would have had a few more problems than he already did. It’s a really fast, rough course, and you just have to make sure you don’t wear it out in the first couple of laps so you have something left to race at the end.”

Third-place finisher BJ “Ballistic” Baldwin did like any good finisher and thanked the fans.

“It’s good to be here—I live here in Las Vegas and I wanted to bring it home for V-Town,” said Baldwin, the 2011 winner of the Mint 400, a race known by its promoters as The Great American Off-Road Race. “We live in the greatest city in the United States, there are tons of awesome people and tons of off-road fans. This is a very difficult sport to spectate, but you have people driving an hour out to spots to see us drive by for 15 seconds, so those are diehard fans. There’s more passion in this form of motorsports than any other form on the planet!”

That passion will carry many of the Mint 400 teams south of the border to San Felipe for the SCORE season-opening San Felipe 250 March 29-April 3, in the small resort town of San Felipe tucked into the top of the Sea of Cortez on the Baja peninsula. Tal vez nos vemos alli?

*See you there?