June 09, 2025
Ensenada, Baja, Mexico
- Baja Honda Passport Trophy Truck finishes second in the 2WD class
- Ethan Ebert scores Honda’s first ever off-road unlimited pole
- Passport entry finishes 11th overall in the grueling off-road event
The Baja Honda Passport continues to impress the off-road community with a strong finish this past weekend at the 57th running of the BFGoodrich SCORE Baja 500. Compared to the competitors in the Trophy Truck class, the Passport runs a unique SUV body as well as a V6 drivetrain. But it’s not just its appearance that is really making a statement, Ethan Ebert and team are continuing to impress with top results running in the pinnacle of off-road racing classes in North America.
The SCORE Baja 500 is not for the faint-hearted. The terrain varies between sandy, muddy, and rocky, and features high-speed dirt trails, canyons, mountains, and coastline. At points it runs as high as 5,500ft of elevation before dropping back down to sea level. Competitors were given 18 hours to complete the 463-mile course—only 97 of the 169 entries were able to finish the task.
Ethan Ebert (Lead Driver): “Super cool to qualify on pole and 10th overall! An experience I’ve never had. Finishing P2 at Baja, we are feeling really good, this was really fun. It’s awesome to represent Honda and HRC and put on a good show for them.”
Competing against much bigger higher horsepower V8 trucks, 19-year-old Ethan Ebert—with navigator Gatlan Haddon—was able to put his Honda Passport Trophy Truck on pole by almost 8-seconds in the 2WD class, Honda’s first-ever off-road unlimited pole. This allowed him to start 10th overall, a significant advantage in a race where the dust can be unbearable. With each Trophy Truck starting in gaps of 60 seconds, the Passport surprised the field of 66 Trophy Trucks by keeping up with the AWD leaders for much of the event.
Mile 74 saw the team complete a quick 30-second pit stop to make a brake repair without losing any track position. At mile 134 they did their first scheduled pitstop adding 75 gallons of race fuel, putting on two new 40-inch rear tires and completing a driver/navigator change, all in under 1 minute.
Richard Glaszczak (with navigator Brandon Wells) took over for the tight and challenging mountain section. After a puncture required them to change their own tire on course, they found themselves in 2nd out of the 19 2WD Trophy Trucks, but not for long. After climbing to over 5,500ft of elevation, they were able to make a move for the lead on the downhill portion of the mountain. They continued to swap places with the leader over the next 100 miles, much of it very muddy with recent heavy rainfall. After almost five hours, they pulled over along the pacific coast at mile 308 for another pit stop where Ebert and Haddon took back over.
The two leaders continued to battle until another puncture slowed the SUV down. This time a malfunctioning impact gun caused the team to lose valuable time, and possibly the chance at the win. Fans even came to help as the team had to use a breaker bar to manually remove each lug nut.
After another mountainous section where Ebert was able to regain a lot of the lost time, the team finished a well-earned 2nd place with an impressive time of 9:47:25. The Baja 500 gave the team the chance to make a bold statement by running their Honda Racing Corporation (HRC) built 3.5L V6 SUV up front all race against the larger V8 AWD trucks. Throughout the weekend the Honda Passport was received with overwhelming support from the community as fans were attracted to the unique entry.
Quotes
Jeff Proctor (Team Principal) Finished 2nd in class (11th overall out of 66 Trophy Trucks): “I’m really proud of the team to overcome some adversity and stay with the game plan and fight all race long. Our Honda Passport was on rails all day thanks to the driving of Ethan and Richard and our navigators for their execution of the plan. Putting the Passport on the podium of the Baja 500 was huge! If you weren’t on board as a believer in this team, you are now. We can almost taste the victory! So pumped for my Honda boys. Making history.”
BAJA 500 Results
2nd – Trophy Truck 2WD (11th overall) – #81T Team Honda Baja Passport – Ethan Ebert, Gatlan Haddon
Next
The Honda Off-Road Racing Team will finish the 2025 season November 10-16 with the 58th running of the BFGoodrich SCORE Baja 1000.
