Why Honda’s Hybrid Trophy Truck marks off-road racing’s new reset

By now, Thursday night’s unmasking of Honda’s new factory hybrid Passport Trophy Truck has been plastered via social media far and wide.  

As the cover was finally pulled off the Passport most of the young influencers at the launch event weren’t sure what their ubiquitous iPhone were capturing. It didn’t matter. They all knew the generation next Trophy Truck – to use their vernacular – “goes hard.”   

Up close, the new Mason Motorsport-crafted unlimited Trophy Truck racer is more astonishing than press photos can capture. Clad in the always brilliant Red Bull livery, the fit and finish of the-all carbon body work was as fine as any in motorsports. State-of-the-art billet aluminum components sparkled under the stage lights. The group at Honda Racing Corporation (HRC) introduced the most aero-friendly bodywork off-road racing has ever seen. The newest factory Honda racer is in IMSA GTP car on Trophy Truck steroids. As many keyboard warriors have observed, the thing is just sexy. 

Sexy indeed. 

To those of us in attendance with deep ties to the sport the arrival of Honda’s factory campaign with Menzies Motorsports and driver Bryce Menzies signifies something with far more extended impact. Like surfers out for an early morning session, for the past few years we could all feel the next wave for off-road racing coming. As it turns out, the all-wheel drive technology now dominating desert races was just the first shore break. 

Almost three years in the making, Honda’s massive new effort represents a much larger wave. Now a true factory campaign that seeks to reshape the highest level of off-road technology and performance has emerged in extraordinary fashion.   

True, the sport has seen an increase of factory-supported off-road motorsports over the past few years. Ford Racing’s investment in using the sport to support and grow its massively successful Raptor truck and SUV product line has been a true game changer, forcing Chevrolet and Toyota to at least look at similar programs while expanding the greater off-road performance audience at the same time. 

The rapid worldwide expansion of UTV (or SxS) motorsports has also been a sport-defining influence with a wide range of manufacturers. None of which, however, can match the fervent dedication to the sport and the pace of development as Polaris. Their backing of the true SCI factory race team rivals anything in motorsports, with dedicated engineers and product development staff dedicated only to the race-dominating effort. 

In fact, just this morning Polaris introduced its next generation of factory race car – the new RZR Pro R Factory Boost (pictured above). Legal in the SCORE, AORC and Ultra4 series, the insane new offering also “goes hard” with 400 turbocharged horsepower, a much longer 111-inch wheelbase, full electronics and all new aero-friendly carbon fiber bodywork. Soon these new RZRs will be available to the racing public, albeit at a reported $200,000 price tag. 

What makes Honda’s new campaign so compelling is their extraordinarily well-timed bid for factories not just to compete for category wins as they have in the past (often against little to no competition in a sport overwrought with classes), but to earn overall victories at races like next year’s 60th SCORE Baja 1000. 

At its core, the new Polaris RZR Pro 4 Factory Boost reflects a bold step toward a their often-stated goal of having the unthinkable happen – a UTV competing for the top honors in major desert races. Their uber-talented driver Brock Heger has brought Polaris close in the past few years at the Baja 500 and Baja 1000. It will be fascinating to see far this potent new RZR will take Heger and the whole SCI team. 

Best in the Desert photo

This summer, Ford Racing entered their radical Ford Raptor T1+ (pictured above) in the 30th annual Vegas to Reno endurance race. The Red Bull-backed machine piloted by driver Mitch Guthrie Jr. and navigator driver Kellon Walch shocked the establishment on what was supposed to be just a real-world test session. Despite running in restricted Dakar trim the 350-hp machine came home second overall. 

All of this points to off-road racing’s next reset. Now will come the exciting development of factories racing for overall honors, with the wide-open and unlimited environment offering tantalizing options in powerplant configurations, hybrid and electric systems and various power-to-weight possibilities. 

Honda could have taken their next motorsports investment to a lot of places. 

Giving today’s continued appetite for purchasing high-margin, high-performance trucks, SUVs and UTVs, we may be on the verge of a long-awaited factory renaissance at the top echelons of the sport. On this paradigm-shifting day one wonders what the discussions are within the hallways of Ford, Toyota, Chevrolet, Jeep, Can-Am and maybe even Porsche.