Ford brought its most capable off-road competition vehicle to Nevada’s desert last weekend, and it nearly won. Mitch Guthrie Jr. and co-driver Kellon Walch finished second overall at the 2026 Casey Folks Vegas to Reno, completing the more than 500-mile race in 7 hours, 43 minutes, and 49 seconds. The margin behind the winning Unlimited Truck: 5 minutes and 53 seconds.
The result marked the Ford Raptor T1+‘s first race on American soil and its first competition outside international rally raid. What makes the margin credible as a benchmark is what the T1+ was competing against. The field included purpose-built Unlimited Trucks making over 1,000 hp and developed specifically for U.S. desert racing conditions. The Raptor ran in full FIA Dakar specification, complete with the regulatory weight, power, and equipment limitations required for international rally-raid competition.
Ford Racing and M-Sport entered Vegas to Reno with two objectives: see how the global Raptor would stack up against American-spec hardware, and use the race’s unusual distance as a Dakar preparation tool. Vegas to Reno, the longest point-to-point off-road race in the United States, packed roughly 800 kilometers of competition into a single day. That is approximately twice the competitive distance the team would typically cover in one Dakar stage, and it gave M-Sport a rare opportunity to stress the truck, its components, and the crew at sustained race pace.
The truck held up. No mechanical issues across the full distance, aside from a puncture. M-Sport program manager Matthew Wilson called the mileage “the biggest positive out of the whole thing,
Source: Ford. Images courtesy of Ford.
