Brock Heger Wins Vegas-to-Reno 2026 in RZR Pro R Factory

Quick Facts

• What: 2026 Vegas-to-Reno desert race, UTV Pro overall win

• Winner: Brock Heger, No. T96 RZR Pro R Factory (Polaris RZR Factory Racing)

• Time: 7 hours, 51 minutes, 29 seconds over 505 miles

• Finish: UTV Pro overall win by nearly 4 minutes; 7th overall among all four-wheel classes including Unlimited Trophy Trucks

• Also of note: Ethan Groom drove the No. T74 RZR Pro R Factory to fifth in UTV Pro; Polaris took six of the top-10 UTV Pro overall spots

• What's next: RZR Factory Racing heads to Mexico for the Baja 400, September 8-13, as part of the SCORE Desert Series

The reversed course isn’t just trivia. Vegas-to-Reno had run the same direction for three decades, so every team that’s ever competed had thirty years of notes, video and muscle memory built on the old layout. This year, everybody was working from scratch on navigation, braking points, and where the course actually punishes you — the kind of unknown that usually favors chaos over dominance. Instead, Heger qualified second by just over half a second, then built a lead that stretched past eight minutes on corrected time at one point during the race. That’s a team that adapted faster than the rest of the field, in real time, in the middle of the Nevada desert, with rocks, dust and triple-digit heat working against everybody equally.

The seventh-overall finish is the part that should get more attention than it will. UTVs and Trophy Trucks aren’t the same category, and everyone racing knows it — the trucks have more horsepower, more top speed, and a design built purely for outright pace over rough terrain. A UTV finishing ahead of “the vast majority” of that four-wheel field, as Polaris put it, says something real about how far the RZR Pro R Factory has closed the gap on machines with a completely different power ceiling. Heger himself framed it as validation, telling Polaris after the race that the car “performed flawlessly” and that finishing seventh overall against the trucks “makes this one special.” After chasing this specific race for as long as this team has, and clearing it while beating half the truck field too, that reaction is earned.

Alex Scheuerell, Polaris‘ Director of Off-Road Motorsports, put a number on the bigger picture: Polaris grabbed six of the top-10 UTV Pro overall finishes at this race. That’s not one hot car and one hot driver — it’s depth across the program, and Ethan Groom’s fifth-place finish in the No. T74 RZR Pro R Factory backs it up. A second Polaris entry finished inside the top five on a course nobody had run before, in conditions that chewed up plenty of the field.

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Vegas-to-Reno was one of the few majors still missing from the team’s trophy case, and closing it out with a first-ever win, on a reversed course, seventh overall against the trucks, fills that gap about as cleanly as a team could ask for. Heger already carries a resume full of major desert racing results. Vegas-to-Reno was the notable one missing. It isn’t anymore.

The team doesn’t get much time to sit with it. RZR Factory Racing heads to Mexico next for the Baja 400, running September 8-13 as part of the SCORE Desert Series, where Polaris will look to keep building on a season that already includes this win and a stacked UTV Pro leaderboard. If the RZR Pro R Factory is closing the gap on Trophy Trucks in the desert now, Baja is the next real test of whether that’s a one-race performance or the new normal for this program.

You can follow the team's season and race schedule at Polaris.com/RZR, and SCORE International keeps updated entry lists and results for races like the Baja 400 on its official race schedule. Vegas-to-Reno itself is organized under the Best in the Desert banner, which runs several of the marquee off-road events in Nevada each season, including this one.