Championship Off-Road Season Wraps at Crandon With Title Drama, Big Winners

Going into Saturday’s Championship Off-Road finale at Crandon International Raceway, it was going to take a minor miracle for Keegan Kincaid to score the series’ 2021 Pro 2 title. Despite winning nearly half of the races on the season, some ill-timed DNFs had knocked him from the top spot in the championship, and the math would need to work out just right for him to get the lead back from Jerett Brooks.

Kincaid did the part that was within his control by scoring the win in the final points race of the year, but benefitted as well from a surprise mechanical issue for Brooks that ended in a huge crash and DNF after the halfway point. The result was Kincaid’s fifth race win in 11 starts this year, and enough to score his second class championship in the Midwest in the past three years. Mickey Thomas and 2020 series champion Kyle Kleiman would round out the top three. On the other side of the coin, the damage to Brooks’ truck was substantial enough to end his World Championship weekend a day early.

In Pro 4, it was one Greaves winning the battle, another winning the war. Johnny Greaves took his 101^st career class win and second of the season, taking the top spot over Jimmy Henderson and Kyle Chaney, while CJ Greaves reclaimed the class title from 2020 champion Kyle LeDuc. The Pro Mod SXS win, meanwhile, went to Andrew Carlson, but with Rodney VanEperen finishing second, it wouldn’t be enough to deny VanEperen the 2021 title; Chaney wound up third in that class as well.

But only one driver had what it took to score two Pro class championships in 2021, and his name was Brock Heger. After shifting his short course program to the Midwest with the dissolution of the Lucas Oil Off Road Racing Series, Heger put on a clinic in both the Pro Lite and Pro Stock SXS classes to score both class titles—one of which he already locked up last month at Bark River International Raceway. He’d beat CJ Greaves and Owen VanEperen to end the Pro Stock season with yet another victory, and would finish behind only Cole Mamer in the Pro Lite finale. Dillon Pointon would finish behind Heger to complete the podium.

As always, Crandon brought out some all-star one-offs throughout the field, with perhaps no bigger name on the entry list than Travis Pastrana. Teaming up with Andrew Carlson for the second straight year, and this time jumping into the Pro 4 class, Pastrana scored a respectable seventh place finish against the largest field of the season, with a whopping 17 trucks on the entry list.

With the points racing wrapped up on the weekend, Sunday’s focus is on pride and paychecks, as the Red Bull Crandon World Cup awards the biggest single-race prizes of the year. Opening ceremonies kick off at 10AM before jumping into a full day of racing, starting with the Pro 4 and Pro 2 races and running through a full program before combining both of those classes to award the Crandon World Cup at the end of the day.

Images via Championship Off-Road