2024 UNLTD Championship Chase: Class 10 and Class 5 Unlimited
The 2024 UNLTD Off-Road Racing season concludes on October 2-6 with the return of the California 300. As we prepare for an epic finish to this year’s campaign, we’re going to take a look each week at the top racers across the dozens of classes that make up a typical UNLTD entry list.
This week, our deep dive into the Pro classes continues with a look at Class 10 and Class 5 Unlimited, two of the fastest classes in this year’s Parker 400 and Mint 400 Limited Races:
Class 10
The Parker 400 wasn’t particularly kind to most of the Class 10 entries that showed up, as only Lance Webb and Brody Aikins were the only drivers who made it to the finish. That gave them the edge heading into the BFGoodrich Tires Mint 400, and while neither of them earned a class podium in that races, finishes of sixth for Webb and fourth for Aikins were still good enough to keep them up front, with Webb holding the edge, 325-323.
Tyler Mills bounced back from his Parker DNF by winning the Mint 400 in class, and coming within 56 seconds of claiming the Limited Race overall. But while UTV Pro Open took the top overall honors, Class 10 scored three of the top five overall finishers, with Mills’ four-lap time of 7:36:44 joined by Abraham Gutierrez’s 7:40:51 in third and Nick May’s 7:44:01 in fifth. Add in Aikins and the top four in class were only separated by just over 16 minutes.
In the past two California 300s, Class 10 raced as the slowest group in the Unlimited Race, but both class wins were still good for eighth overall on the grueling Barstow course. Dale Ebberts achieved the feat as the final driver to finish all four laps in 2022, while May took top honors last year.
Class 5 Unlimited
The unlimited take on the iconic Baja Bug formula, Class 5 Unlimited remains a popular formula for off-road lifers, and it’s still got plenty of life towards the front of the Limited Race field. Keith Waibel impressed all race long at the Parker 400, clawing his way from eighth at the end of the first lap, to sixth after the second, all the way onto the overall podium at race’s end, under 15 minutes off the overall winning time. However, that luck didn’t carry into the Mint 400, where he led the class after the first lap but fell out before the halfway mark.
With Waibel out of the picture, Tevon Murachanian defeated Kayden Guernsey by nearly two hours to win the Mint. Murachanian raced the same car that his father Garo campaigned 40 years earlier in the same class, which the family found in 2020, repurchased, and restored to return to the Great American Off-Road Race—with the original paint job on it, no less!
In the inaugural California 300, none of the Class 5 entries made it to the finish, with Jack Grabowski’s two laps the high water mark—though the Grabowski family got its revenge on the course by winning the Unlimited Race overall despite running in the Unlimited Truck SPEC class. Likewise, Ezra Kuhn was only able to finish two laps last season.
Catch up on all of the 2024 UNLTD Championship Chase posts:
July 18: UTV Modified/UTV Stock/Youth
July 25: Limited Truck
August 1: Limited Car, Vintage, and Military
August 8: Motorcycles
August 15: UTV Pro NA and Pro Stock
August 22: UTV Pro and Pro Open