By Will Burgess

Ensenada, Mexico — In a major reversal, SCORE International released a final updated rankings sheet Thursday for official racer standings in the 2022 Baja 500 race, held in Endenada, Mexico earlier this month.

The results, dated June 8, 2022 at 5:03 PM PDT, moved several teams, around fifty in all, into different final positions.

PartsPitStop has been following Team Polaris Factory Racing (pictured) and #2969 Branden Sims who were affected by this change.

At the conclusion of the June 4 race, Sims and his team were awarded the second place victory, but a follow up “official results sheet” was later issued which moved third place team Jagged X and #2919 Brandon Schueler, into second place for the UTV Forced Induction category.

With this latest reversal, Sims and his team are returned back into their second place victory for both Forced Induction and overall UTV classes.

After the initial results were tallied Saturday, Score later issued time credits to select racers who assisted in a bottleneck around RM 102 during the course of the race resulting from an emergency with one of the teams.

Team Jagged X received one of these credits for what was referred to as “SOS Aid”, but none were awarded to Team Polaris Factory Racing who have stated they were too far back in the logjam to fully understand what was unfolding at the time.

Several racers took to social media after the Baja 500 race to complain about Score’s seemingly uneven application of time credits, some going as far as to suggest a boycott against Score and the racing series.

It is believed this groundswell lead to Score reissuing these new rankings released Thursday in order to strike a more fair ruling among participants.

However, not all racers feel justified with this final result.

“Not everyone got the time credit for the mile 102 incident,” said #2948 Matt Burroughs with Team Factory Can-Am Monster Energy, “I was the next UTV behind [Austin] Weiland and in front of Jagged [X]. I got no time credit. Difference between 11th and 9th has a big impact on season points for us.”

Overall winner for the UTV class, #2954 Austin Weiland, racing for Can-Am Off-Road, was unaffected by the bottleneck and his time of 11:50:59.667 remains unchanged with these latest results issued.

Score has certified these results as “final” with no plans to change rankings for the Baja 500 race any further.

While the new official standings issued by Score seem to have closed a chapter for some of the professional racers at the Baja 500—which many have called a brutal race this season—it seems some may still have a score to settle.

The next race in this series, the Baja 400, will be held Sept. 13-18, 2022.

Cover: Branden Sims in the Baja 500 Winner’s Circle. Sims officially takes the #2 position for overall UTV after a reversal of fortune spurred by Score International after select racers received time credits. | @branden_sims

Will Burgess is a journalist with Adrenaline Powersports Mag