Built for Dakar, Pointed at Nevada: The Ford Raptor T1+ Is Making Its U.S. Race Debut at Vegas to Reno

Ford Racing is bringing the purpose-built Raptor T1+ to the 2026 Casey Folks Vegas to Reno. Mitch Guthrie Jr. and Kellon Walch will pilot the Dakar-proven machine across 500-plus miles of Nevada desert for the first time on American soil.

What Makes the Raptor T1+ Different From a Factory Race Truck

The Ford Raptor T1+ is not a tuned street truck entered into a desert race. It is a purpose-built rally-raid machine designed for the most demanding multi-day events on the planet, constructed by Ford Racing in partnership with M-Sport, the motorsports outfit that builds championship rally cars for world-level competition. The vehicle runs a custom T45 steel spaceframe chassis, a 5.0-liter Coyote-based V8 engine, and long-travel suspension developed specifically for terrain that would destroy a modified production vehicle.

The T1+ classification in rally raid, used at the Dakar Rally and other FIA World Rally Raid Championship events, designates the highest-specification production-based class. These vehicles share a nameplate with a consumer product but bear little mechanical resemblance to the truck you can buy at a dealership. The relationship is branding. The engineering is entirely separate, built to survive thousands of kilometers across sand, rocks, and rough desert terrain under conditions that produce mechanical failures in lesser machines.

What the T1+ has never done, despite its proven record at Dakar, is complete a continuous point-to-point stage as long as the Casey Folks Vegas to Reno. Dakar stages typically cover 300 to 500 kilometers per day across multiple competition days, with service and reset periods between stages. Vegas to Reno covers more than 500 miles of Nevada desert in one continuous push. The vehicle has proven its speed and reliability in stages. This race tests whether that capability holds over one very long day in the Nevada dirt.

Mitch Guthrie Jr. and What He Brings to This Debut

Mitch Guthrie Jr. is the right driver to make this debut meaningful. He won the Casey Folks Vegas to Reno outright in 2025, piloting a Polaris RZR Pro R Factory to an overall victory in the UTV category with the best time recorded by any four-wheeled vehicle in that year's race. He knows the course from years of competition and has the raw speed and mechanical awareness that a debut with a new and unfamiliar platform requires.

Earlier in his career, Guthrie Jr. won the King of the Hammers in both 2018 and 2019, making him the first back-to-back champion of that event since his father. King of the Hammers combines open desert and technical rock crawling in ways that demand adaptability across terrain types. That kind of versatility is exactly what managing an unfamiliar vehicle over a 500-mile course demands when conditions shift midway through the race.

Kellon Walch co-drives. Co-driver performance at Vegas to Reno matters considerably, because navigation, communication, and course note management over a race of this length determine how much the driver can push versus when to conserve. A first-time run with a new platform calls for a co-driver who reads pace and manages the race rather than just calling turns, and Walch fills that role.

Why This Entry Matters for Desert Racing

Factory-backed Dakar programs do not often cross over to American desert racing. The Dakar Rally and the World Rally Raid Championship operate on a different calendar, in different geography, with different logistical structures than the AORC desert racing season. When a manufacturer brings a Dakar-grade machine to a domestic race, it is both a logistical commitment and a statement about where the manufacturer sees value in American off-road competition.

For Ford, the Vegas to Reno entry puts the Raptor T1+ in front of an American desert racing audience at one of the most prestigious events on the domestic calendar, in the same year that Vegas to Reno marks its 30th running. The visibility of a Dakar machine on Nevada dirt, competing against the best domestic desert racers over 500-plus miles, is a combination that does not come around often in desert racing.

For fans who have followed Dakar coverage but never had the chance to see that class of machinery on American soil, August 13 is worth planning around. Follow the action at liveondirt.com for race-week coverage, pre-race updates from the course, and results as they come in from the Nevada desert.

5 Reasons the T1+ Debut at Vegas to Reno Is Worth Watching

This is not just another factory truck entry. Here is what makes the Ford Raptor T1+ appearance at Vegas to Reno a standout moment in the 2026 desert racing calendar.

1. A Dakar machine on American dirt for the first time: The Raptor T1+ was built for the FIA World Rally Raid Championship circuit, including Dakar. Domestic desert racing fans have never seen this specific machine compete in the United States. The debut itself is the story, regardless of where it finishes on the leaderboard.
2. The venue is Vegas to Reno in its 30th year: The Casey Folks Vegas to Reno is marking its 30th running in 2026. Pairing that milestone year with the U.S. debut of a Dakar-specification machine is a combination that does not come around often in American desert racing history.
3. Guthrie Jr. already knows how to win this race: Mitch Guthrie Jr. won Vegas to Reno overall in 2025, so he is not learning the course from scratch. Now he is attempting to win it in a fundamentally different and significantly more powerful vehicle in a harder class than he ran last year.
4. The endurance question has never been answered for this vehicle: The T1+ has proven itself in Dakar stages. It has not run a 500-plus mile continuous push in a single day. That is a different kind of mechanical stress, and whether the vehicle handles it will produce useful data for Ford's program regardless of final finishing position.
5. The 30th anniversary field is loaded: The milestone year is drawing a strong entry list. Adding a factory Dakar machine to an already competitive field raises the stakes across the leaderboard and creates matchups between the T1+ and the domestic desert racing elite that fans have not had the chance to watch before.

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