Ricky Brabec can win on two and four wheels, and this past weekend’s Mint 400 was perhaps one of the finest showcases of his versatility.
Already well established as one of the top American bike racers in rally raid as a two-time Dakar Rally champion, he added both motorcycle and UTV trophies during his weekend in Las Vegas. On Friday, Brabec and Skyler Howes teamed up to claim the Mint 400 Limited Race in the UTV Pro Normally Aspirated class. The following day, he and Preston Campbell dominated the Mint’s Motorcycle Race.
Brabec and Howes are team-mates at Monster Energy Honda Rally Team in the World Rally-Raid Championship. Although they led the RallyGP rider’s and manufacturer’s standings after Brabec won the season-opening Dakar Rally in January, Honda elected not to enter the latest W2RC round, the Abu Dhabi Desert Challenge that took place a week before the Mint. With time until the next race in April, the pair decided to head back to America to tackle the Mint.
The two raced the #1991 Honda Talon 1000R prepared by RaceCo-USA, whose owner Jamie Campbell ran the Dakar in a hydrogen-powered UTV developed by Japan’s automotive giants called the HySE-X1. Brabec and navigator Chad Lawson did the first two laps, running what Howes called a “flawless two laps” as Brabec set the third fastest time in class through lap one before improving to second.
Howes and Daylee Holcomb took over for the second half. He suffered a flat tyre during his stint, which he was unable to repair when the jack malfunctioned but managed to save the effort after borrowing a replacement from a competitor whose car also broke down nearby. By the end, the duo’s #1991 finished twenty-sixth overall and beat Honda factory driver Michael McFayden for the class win by seven minutes. His girlfriend Sara Price, who won the same Dakar stage as him in January, finished directly behind him in the overall in twenty-seventh.
On Saturday, Brabec traded his steering wheel for the handlebars of a Honda CRF450X (an enduro version of the CRF450 that Brabec races in the W2RC) from JCR Honda, owned by Jamie’s brother and eleven-time Baja 1000 winner Johnny Campbell. He and Preston, Johnny’s son, wiped the floor in the Motorcycle Race as they beat Danny Cooper‘s team by nineteen minutes. It was Brabec’s second Mint bike victory after winning in 2019, the event’s first motorcycle race since 1976.
With a Mint 400 bike win under his belt, Preston admitted “it would be super fun if Ricky wanted to let me drive his side-by-side. That’d be cool. We could do this again. It would be awesome.”
Brabec concurred and said, “It could be a possibility. Maybe I’ll ask Preston to drive next year and maybe Preston will ask me to ride and maybe we could do it.” He has also expressed interest in driving an Unlimited Truck, which raced concurrent with the bikes on Saturday.
Even if four wheelers are not his forte, he was certainly no stranger to them before the Mint. Brabec made his UTV competition début in 2020 with DP4 Racing before broadening his horizon to events like the 2022 Vegas to Reno, which he previously won on a bike. Of course, this does not necessarily mean he is eyeing a permanent vehicle switch in the near-future as he is still more than content on a bike.
After the Mint, he and Howes will rejoin Monster Energy Honda for the W2RC’s BP Ultimate Rally-Raid in Portugal on 3–7 April. After skipping Abu Dhabi, Brabec sits second in the RallyGP championship and twelve points behind Ross Branch.
