motive
Active Member
Where to start? It has been such a long journey from our first foray into UTV racing to winning the Pro Turbo class race at the UTVWC that I might as well give you some of the background...
Being that we are from Utah we are outside the normal desert racing area. So when we started thinking about giving it a try we flew into Vegas for the 2014 Vegas to Reno tech to see what set these desert cars apart from the rock crawlers we were use to. I must say that anyone thinking about racing should consider this a first step. Offer to help a team for the day. (many of the privateer teams can defiantly use a hand). Anyway, after looking at all the cars, talking to racers, vendors and Cory we felt we were ready to give it a go. The only thing was that we though it was a smart idea to design as much as we could instead of use one of the many great companies that already dominated the UTV racing scene. Well it was an undertaking to say the least. Now a normal build can take months of working late nights. We were probably over optimistic but we kept plugging away at it. In that time the team owner Ryan bought a well used race car to use while we build our car. Only getting the car a couple days before the 2015 Parker race and 600 miles from home, Ryan did his best to prep the machine but the car would only run on one cylinder for the entire race. Then we tried racing the first ever UTVWC where the old engine decided it wanted to be recycled and live its life as a grenade. The Mint we had some handling issues that was causing massive oversteer and the car went off course and wiped out a boulder with the front A arm. Crap. This desert racing stuff is hard! Just getting across the finish would be a win for us! But with each failure we learned. We applied it to our new car design. We made several minor changes along the way the would slow the construction of the new car. Then mid season the announcement was made that motor swaps would be allowed and the tire size would go up to a 32" tire. This was a difficult time as we waited for the news if the class was going to be split or not. Would we keep the current setup or would we redesign it for the larger tires and possibly switch power plants? Ultimately, we decided that we had set out to build the most advanced utv allowed by the rules and that is what we were going to do. A major redesign of the suspension happened. The chassis had to be cut front and rear. New parts were laser cut, bent, welded, machined. As Parker 2016 neared we pushed hard to get the car driveable but in the wee hours of the morning before we would have to head out the realization sank in that we were not going to make it. I was both disappointed and revealed at the same time. We took a couple days off to catch up with our families and then we began the final push to finish it. The details we had skipped were finished. An appointment with the wrap company was made. And most important-shock tuning.
I will say that when you begin working outside the box on a utv, a lot of companies scratch there head. It doesn't compute what we were doing. Axle companies didn't understand why we would call with measurements. They kept asking, " Just tell me what brand long travel kit you have and we can set you up." Shock tuning wasn't much better. We were flat out told by some very knowledgeable shock tuners that do both utvs and class 10 and up vehicles that they couldn't help us. Same thing, if it wasn't a mass produced kit, they didn't want to tough it. OK. So we had to turn to a company that had never touched a utv that wasn't already locked in that mental box. That is where Collins Motorsports came in. What an amazing shop. Ryan spent most of the week of KOH testing with them and the car was getting fast. He also smoked many axles in that time. A utv axle is just not designed to do what we were asking it to do with our custom suspension. Turner Cycles stepped up and built us the custom axles we needed to keep moving forward with testing. Sorry if this is getting long. I'll get on with it.
Race week! As a team we were feeling great. The car had several hundred hard miles on it testing and tuning and it was working great. Still needing the clutch gone over, Ryan headed out to Laughlin early to meet up with Adam of Airdam. By the time Eric and I got into town the car was dirty, it needed some new tires and a few other little things so we went to work in the corner of the parking lot and finished up around 1 in the morning. We were all excited for tech the next day as we knew everyone would want to see the car but we decided to go check out the course with the poker run first. We couldn't believe that the course had been graded! We knew that a rougher course would favor us but the majority of it looked like a rally course. With that we headed to tech. Ryan was beginning to get real sick and he didn't look like he was enjoying himself but he stuck it out. So if you tried talking to him and he wasn't the friendliest, that is why. It was a lot of fun seeing all the excitement over the car. There were people looking over all the unique details, others acted like they wanted to look closer but just stared from a distance. Some people said we were going to dominate and others commented that we did it all wrong. The most common was that we wouldn't be able to make belts and axles last with the 32" ITP tires. The best comments from tech was from Joey D. Just the excitement in his face about seeing our car there was awesome. I just hoped we wouldn't embarrass ourselves the next day.
We were lucky enough to draw a second row start right after the top 10 finishers from Parker. Sitting in the co drivers seat waiting for the green flag to drop, I realized I had never been in the car off road! I wasn't able to make any of the tuning sessions. I had no idea what the car would do but still I felt calm. We had prepared for this moment for a year. I think Ryan felt it too as the flag dropped because he kept his cool and his ego in check. We had planned on just getting a clean start and that is what we did but were no better than 10th out of the 15 on our row. We braced ourselves for the blinding dust that we had experienced the year before when the infield turned into open desert. But it never came. The track was watered MILES into the course which allowed us to charge hard and pass several cars right away. We checked off car after car but I knew there were some fast guys in our group that had gotten a better start than us. Namely Johnny and Burnett. As it turned out both had bad luck and we were able to get by both. In fact, a LOT of people had bad luck. As we started our second lap there were cars broken down all over the track and with each lap there seamed to be more. In a race I think its common to have the reaction of " great! one less person I have to deal with!" but in a race like this where you make 10 laps and you have passed the same person several times, you start to cheer for them when you see them get going again. So much work goes into just getting to a race that you really have to feel for the teams who's day ended early. I guess after our rough rookie year, I knew what it feels like to sit in the desert waiting for a tow back to the truck.
As we got more comfortable, Ryan began hitting obstacles faster and faster. The Fox Proving grounds were a blast. No way our old car would have taken it as fast as we were going. Eventually we got too comfortable and hit a jump on the powerline road too fast. In a panic Ryan hit the brakes which put us into a nose dive. We hit hard and somehow didn't go end over end but I made the bad call of thinking we blew a tire so Ryan pulled over and we let the first 2 cars of the race get by us. After that the car felt fine but we decided to pull into the pit anyway for a once over. Luckily we did as a rear axle had popped out of the transmission. The boys got us fixed up fast but we still lost 6 or 7 minutes and several more places. After that we took what we thought was a casual pace but still no one ever caught us. The cars that we were passing got fewer and fewer even though we were deep into lapped traffic. Most noticeable was how rough the course was getting though. Some of the offset chatter bumps in the infield would seriously try to turn your insides into an unrecognizable blob of flesh and blood. The top of all the ruts was graded flat by the skid plates of all the other cars. Maybe it was a good thing they had graded it to start with because by the end of 10 laps I was going to ready to get out.
With each new lap I let Ryan work up his speed. After he asked our speed though one rough section and told me to pace him at that the following laps, I began to lie to him about our speed. A few more laps later he was doing 10 mph faster through the same section and the car was taking it in strides. Our pits was doing the best they could to track the leaders and each lap they would tell us that we were around 6th place. Not bad for a maiden voyage in a new car. As we would buzz the pits I loved seeing Mitchell whoop and holler and fist pump the air! We seriously have the best team! haha. I could also tell that Ryan's and my wives were getting excited too. This was the first race that either one had attended. Up till they saw just how big an event it was at tech they probably thought that we were competing in some small time local back field race. But here we were running in the top 10 in the biggest UTV race ever!
On our last lap as we came down from the hills to the back straight behind the hot pits the crew radioed to watch out for the team stopped on the course. Right away I saw Jones and his co driver pushing their car. I thought they had ran out of gas but it turns out they had broken every axle. I have to hand it to them for getting it fixed enough to limp across the finish with such a respectable time. From there on we took it easy through the infield making sure the car lasted to the finish. When we pulled up there was only one other car their on the podium. Casey came up to us and congratulated us on being the first turbo car to the finish! At that point we though we were at best 5th. I think we were both in shock and awe that we had won! We never battled for the lead. We never had the helicopter follow us around. We just ran our own race and in the end were able to pull it off with a car that could take the abuse and some cool headed driving by Ryan. I'm excited with were the team goes from here as we get more familiar with the car and the courses gets even rougher following the higher horse powered vehicles. The Mint is just around the corner and with a first row start next to Cognito it will be interesting to see if the turbo can finally take the overall or if the well vetted Cognito team can continue their dominating streak. I wish I could be there but BITD decided to schedule it on my wife's birthday and I got "the look" for even suggesting. Maybe if I had waited until after we won to ask her... At least I was able to talk some friends into helping pit and it is Eric's turn to co drive anyway.
I can't end without thanking all those that made this dream of 3 brothers a possibility. Fox shocks was on board with custom shocks from the very beginning. ITP tires has never let us down in a single race. OMF wheels came on late in the game but provided us with perfect wheel to compliment the 32" tires and our custom suspension. Turner Cycles for the special attention we needed with custom axles. Airdam Clutches for the peace of mind. PAC racing springs. Mitchell and Parker for the hundreds of hours fabbing our crazy ideas and for the support at the race. UTVUnderground for the amazing event that gets better each year. And finally, all our wives and family that puts up with the late nights at the shop and the crazy schedules it takes to make a race.
Being that we are from Utah we are outside the normal desert racing area. So when we started thinking about giving it a try we flew into Vegas for the 2014 Vegas to Reno tech to see what set these desert cars apart from the rock crawlers we were use to. I must say that anyone thinking about racing should consider this a first step. Offer to help a team for the day. (many of the privateer teams can defiantly use a hand). Anyway, after looking at all the cars, talking to racers, vendors and Cory we felt we were ready to give it a go. The only thing was that we though it was a smart idea to design as much as we could instead of use one of the many great companies that already dominated the UTV racing scene. Well it was an undertaking to say the least. Now a normal build can take months of working late nights. We were probably over optimistic but we kept plugging away at it. In that time the team owner Ryan bought a well used race car to use while we build our car. Only getting the car a couple days before the 2015 Parker race and 600 miles from home, Ryan did his best to prep the machine but the car would only run on one cylinder for the entire race. Then we tried racing the first ever UTVWC where the old engine decided it wanted to be recycled and live its life as a grenade. The Mint we had some handling issues that was causing massive oversteer and the car went off course and wiped out a boulder with the front A arm. Crap. This desert racing stuff is hard! Just getting across the finish would be a win for us! But with each failure we learned. We applied it to our new car design. We made several minor changes along the way the would slow the construction of the new car. Then mid season the announcement was made that motor swaps would be allowed and the tire size would go up to a 32" tire. This was a difficult time as we waited for the news if the class was going to be split or not. Would we keep the current setup or would we redesign it for the larger tires and possibly switch power plants? Ultimately, we decided that we had set out to build the most advanced utv allowed by the rules and that is what we were going to do. A major redesign of the suspension happened. The chassis had to be cut front and rear. New parts were laser cut, bent, welded, machined. As Parker 2016 neared we pushed hard to get the car driveable but in the wee hours of the morning before we would have to head out the realization sank in that we were not going to make it. I was both disappointed and revealed at the same time. We took a couple days off to catch up with our families and then we began the final push to finish it. The details we had skipped were finished. An appointment with the wrap company was made. And most important-shock tuning.
I will say that when you begin working outside the box on a utv, a lot of companies scratch there head. It doesn't compute what we were doing. Axle companies didn't understand why we would call with measurements. They kept asking, " Just tell me what brand long travel kit you have and we can set you up." Shock tuning wasn't much better. We were flat out told by some very knowledgeable shock tuners that do both utvs and class 10 and up vehicles that they couldn't help us. Same thing, if it wasn't a mass produced kit, they didn't want to tough it. OK. So we had to turn to a company that had never touched a utv that wasn't already locked in that mental box. That is where Collins Motorsports came in. What an amazing shop. Ryan spent most of the week of KOH testing with them and the car was getting fast. He also smoked many axles in that time. A utv axle is just not designed to do what we were asking it to do with our custom suspension. Turner Cycles stepped up and built us the custom axles we needed to keep moving forward with testing. Sorry if this is getting long. I'll get on with it.
Race week! As a team we were feeling great. The car had several hundred hard miles on it testing and tuning and it was working great. Still needing the clutch gone over, Ryan headed out to Laughlin early to meet up with Adam of Airdam. By the time Eric and I got into town the car was dirty, it needed some new tires and a few other little things so we went to work in the corner of the parking lot and finished up around 1 in the morning. We were all excited for tech the next day as we knew everyone would want to see the car but we decided to go check out the course with the poker run first. We couldn't believe that the course had been graded! We knew that a rougher course would favor us but the majority of it looked like a rally course. With that we headed to tech. Ryan was beginning to get real sick and he didn't look like he was enjoying himself but he stuck it out. So if you tried talking to him and he wasn't the friendliest, that is why. It was a lot of fun seeing all the excitement over the car. There were people looking over all the unique details, others acted like they wanted to look closer but just stared from a distance. Some people said we were going to dominate and others commented that we did it all wrong. The most common was that we wouldn't be able to make belts and axles last with the 32" ITP tires. The best comments from tech was from Joey D. Just the excitement in his face about seeing our car there was awesome. I just hoped we wouldn't embarrass ourselves the next day.
We were lucky enough to draw a second row start right after the top 10 finishers from Parker. Sitting in the co drivers seat waiting for the green flag to drop, I realized I had never been in the car off road! I wasn't able to make any of the tuning sessions. I had no idea what the car would do but still I felt calm. We had prepared for this moment for a year. I think Ryan felt it too as the flag dropped because he kept his cool and his ego in check. We had planned on just getting a clean start and that is what we did but were no better than 10th out of the 15 on our row. We braced ourselves for the blinding dust that we had experienced the year before when the infield turned into open desert. But it never came. The track was watered MILES into the course which allowed us to charge hard and pass several cars right away. We checked off car after car but I knew there were some fast guys in our group that had gotten a better start than us. Namely Johnny and Burnett. As it turned out both had bad luck and we were able to get by both. In fact, a LOT of people had bad luck. As we started our second lap there were cars broken down all over the track and with each lap there seamed to be more. In a race I think its common to have the reaction of " great! one less person I have to deal with!" but in a race like this where you make 10 laps and you have passed the same person several times, you start to cheer for them when you see them get going again. So much work goes into just getting to a race that you really have to feel for the teams who's day ended early. I guess after our rough rookie year, I knew what it feels like to sit in the desert waiting for a tow back to the truck.
As we got more comfortable, Ryan began hitting obstacles faster and faster. The Fox Proving grounds were a blast. No way our old car would have taken it as fast as we were going. Eventually we got too comfortable and hit a jump on the powerline road too fast. In a panic Ryan hit the brakes which put us into a nose dive. We hit hard and somehow didn't go end over end but I made the bad call of thinking we blew a tire so Ryan pulled over and we let the first 2 cars of the race get by us. After that the car felt fine but we decided to pull into the pit anyway for a once over. Luckily we did as a rear axle had popped out of the transmission. The boys got us fixed up fast but we still lost 6 or 7 minutes and several more places. After that we took what we thought was a casual pace but still no one ever caught us. The cars that we were passing got fewer and fewer even though we were deep into lapped traffic. Most noticeable was how rough the course was getting though. Some of the offset chatter bumps in the infield would seriously try to turn your insides into an unrecognizable blob of flesh and blood. The top of all the ruts was graded flat by the skid plates of all the other cars. Maybe it was a good thing they had graded it to start with because by the end of 10 laps I was going to ready to get out.
With each new lap I let Ryan work up his speed. After he asked our speed though one rough section and told me to pace him at that the following laps, I began to lie to him about our speed. A few more laps later he was doing 10 mph faster through the same section and the car was taking it in strides. Our pits was doing the best they could to track the leaders and each lap they would tell us that we were around 6th place. Not bad for a maiden voyage in a new car. As we would buzz the pits I loved seeing Mitchell whoop and holler and fist pump the air! We seriously have the best team! haha. I could also tell that Ryan's and my wives were getting excited too. This was the first race that either one had attended. Up till they saw just how big an event it was at tech they probably thought that we were competing in some small time local back field race. But here we were running in the top 10 in the biggest UTV race ever!
On our last lap as we came down from the hills to the back straight behind the hot pits the crew radioed to watch out for the team stopped on the course. Right away I saw Jones and his co driver pushing their car. I thought they had ran out of gas but it turns out they had broken every axle. I have to hand it to them for getting it fixed enough to limp across the finish with such a respectable time. From there on we took it easy through the infield making sure the car lasted to the finish. When we pulled up there was only one other car their on the podium. Casey came up to us and congratulated us on being the first turbo car to the finish! At that point we though we were at best 5th. I think we were both in shock and awe that we had won! We never battled for the lead. We never had the helicopter follow us around. We just ran our own race and in the end were able to pull it off with a car that could take the abuse and some cool headed driving by Ryan. I'm excited with were the team goes from here as we get more familiar with the car and the courses gets even rougher following the higher horse powered vehicles. The Mint is just around the corner and with a first row start next to Cognito it will be interesting to see if the turbo can finally take the overall or if the well vetted Cognito team can continue their dominating streak. I wish I could be there but BITD decided to schedule it on my wife's birthday and I got "the look" for even suggesting. Maybe if I had waited until after we won to ask her... At least I was able to talk some friends into helping pit and it is Eric's turn to co drive anyway.
I can't end without thanking all those that made this dream of 3 brothers a possibility. Fox shocks was on board with custom shocks from the very beginning. ITP tires has never let us down in a single race. OMF wheels came on late in the game but provided us with perfect wheel to compliment the 32" tires and our custom suspension. Turner Cycles for the special attention we needed with custom axles. Airdam Clutches for the peace of mind. PAC racing springs. Mitchell and Parker for the hundreds of hours fabbing our crazy ideas and for the support at the race. UTVUnderground for the amazing event that gets better each year. And finally, all our wives and family that puts up with the late nights at the shop and the crazy schedules it takes to make a race.
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