LAUGHLIN, Nev. — Capping off a great weekend of desert racing Sunday for the Las Vegas Dissemination Company team, determined home-state veteran Pat Dean won the Overall and the unlimited Class 1 victory at the season-opening 14th SCORE Laughlin Desert Challenge over a rain-soaked field of 141 desert racers.
The fastest finisher over eight laps of the rugged 6.25-mile course, Dean ran a combined total time of two hours, eight minutes, 29 seconds, averaging 46.70 miles per hour in a V6 Chevy-powered Bunderson.
Veteran desert racer Rich Ronco made the debut of a made-for-TV Chevy Silverado a memorable one Sunday, finishing second overall and winning the featured SCORE trophy-truck division.
The event featured 141 starters from 19 States, Mexico, Canada and New Zealand, who competed in 17 pro and two sportsman classes for cars and trucks. The classes were split into five groups, each running as part of one of five races each day of three to eight laps over the rugged and challenging 6.25-mile race course.
As dry and dusty Saturday’s racing was, Sunday was just the opposite as extensive rain showers blanketed the Laughlin area for several hours during the event’s final day.
With a one-second lead over LVDC teammate B.J. Richardson after Saturday’s first half of the race, Dean took the lead on Sunday from the start, staying out front from the green flag to the checkered flag for his first overall victory. Richardson finished third overall and second in Class 1, five minutes, 13 seconds behind Dean in a near identical Bunderson-Chevy.
“The funny part is, I sold my car three weeks ago and borrowed a car from a friend of mine, T.J. Flores, which only had a V-6 instead of V-8, so we were real skeptical,” said Dean after pulling off his first SCORE Overall race win in a decade. “But it was awesome. It was a rocket ship today and yesterday. We had a super simple weekend. When things come together, it’s super easy. We had a perfect weekend. They’re hard to come by. We actually finished without the air cleaner yesterday. We were hoping the motor would make it and it obviously did.”
Ronco was second after Saturday’s first eight laps over the intensely-rugged 6.25-mile race course adjacent to the center of the Laughlin resort district, and with the attrition on the race course, his fourth-place result in Sunday’s eight laps was enough for him to earn the victory in his No. 45 Tatum Motorsports SCORE Trophy-Truck, the featured SCORE racing division for high-tech, 800-horsepower, unlimited production trucks.
Originally built for the Unique Whips TV show, Ronco’s No. 45 Tatum Motorsports trophy truck had a two-day combined time of 2:12:57, averaging a weather-effected 45.13 m.p.h. to deny two-time defending champion  B.J. Baldwin, for second overall.