2023 is a long story so I hope you have the time to read it and I promise to attempt to keep it short. Spoiler alert. I did not keep it short.
The year started great. Early January we had an amazing fully rebuilt car ready to go to work. Brady at Side by Customs gave us the keys to the fab shop over the Christmas and New Year break and we were able to put an all-new fuel cell, cage, rear mount rad, and more in the car in short order. All the problems that had plagued us throughout the 22 season were addressed and the car was ready.
The first race was the Mint 400 and we were killing it! 90 miles in a hub gave out. Rolled the car up on its side. No problem that’s what my crew is good at. We were able to get back into the race and climb back onto the podium. But then disaster struck again. A faster class car decided to slam into us as we were letting them by and long story short it ended the race for us. If you want to read the whole story check out this post. LINK
Shortly after that race a good friend of mine was listing his old car for sale. He had it listed at a very tempting price and I had raced against this car in the past and knew it was very capable and fast. I consulted my co-driver about it and he was curious. I then asked my buddy what the homie hook-up on this car would be. To say my jaw dropped and my eyes popped out of my head when he gave me the number was an understatement. So, I met up with the broader team at our favorite watering hole. Roosters Brewing has a brewery/bar in Ogden that is hands down my favorite place for food and beverage. I showed them the build sheet for the car and explained we would have to sell the Polaris.
I deliberately didn’t tell them the price because I wanted to know what they thought without knowing how good of a deal it was. Truthfully this car was worth over 100k with receipts alone. There were some initial concerns about switching platforms. We discussed it at length and eventually, everyone agreed that this car could take us to the next level of competitiveness. Then I told them the price and what we could easily sell our car for. I won’t share that information here but let’s just say I was able to roll some money into the race program by making the deal. So we called up the guy and told him it was sold. We headed to get it that weekend.
Like all Cinderella stories, there is a darker side. The car is well built, with all the best parts, and very very FAST. But, it was not maintained to the standards that we set for our team. There is a difference between Race Ready and Race Prepped. I’ve come to find that Race Ready means it will pass tech. Race Prepped means it’s capable of seeing the checkered flag. I still got a phenomenal deal on the car and am super happy we were able to get it. One of the main reasons you haven’t heard a ton from us this year is that it has been a real struggle to get this car Race Prepped and dialed in. Lots of pieces to that puzzle but she’s damn close now and with 3 races under her belt we have high confidence for the 2024 season.
Our first race with the Can-Am X3 was the Big Sky 200 in Montana. What an absolute riot that course is. We ran hard, broke a belt, saw at least 3 rollovers, and still managed to eke out a top 6 finish in class. The car was lightning-fast but not very stable at speed. So afterward we got it back and started tearing into why she was unstable. Let’s just say the alignment was a little off…. On all 4 corners. Radius rods were shot and we broke some of them trying to replace the heims. For all you would-be racers out there, DO NOT forget the anti-seize. So we were stuck waiting on parts.
When it was finally a rolling car again we were able to take her to our shock guy and what he found inside the shocks also explained why it was unstable. Different valve packs side to side make for an unstable and unpredictable car. And parts to fix that ended up being on back order so we didn’t get the car back for a while.
Enough about the car problems let’s talk about racing again. Our very first Legacy Racing event was the Dirt Rebulution in Cedar City. We had been targeting this race for a few years but it always ended up conflicting with one of our points races for the other organization. This year we weren’t chasing points so let’s go race Legacy. I will tell you right now I was very impressed. Their organization, communication, and overall demeanor were fantastic. It was a rough race for us. We lost a belt at the end of lap 1. Unfortunately, this meant I had to go on a mission. Time had gotten away from us so I was hitting it hard. Had a momentary lapse in talent and slammed the back right tire into a pointy rock on the inside of a curve at about 70mph. XComp tires are badass, but there isn’t a tire in history that can make up for piss-poor driving. The fist-sized hole in the side wall and a bent beadlock on the Vorsteiner wheel show how bad that impact was. Props to the Vorsteiner forged wheel tho. Beant the beadlock but the wheel itself is true and we are going to keep using it with a new ring. Back in the car.
To say the Cedar City race with Legacy is a tight technical course is the understatement of the year. Cedar trees line 75% of the course and routinely we were playing pinball with the cab corners bouncing from one tree to another. I’ve raced some tight technical courses but this one takes the cake. And here we found another flaw with the design of the car. The seats. When we got the car one of the first things we changed was the brakes. Wilwood 6-piston calipers are amazing and Can-Am is not known for good brakes. This I think started a snowball effect because now we had the brake power to dive bomb corners and the power to out-accelerate anyone coming out. What does this have to do with seats you ask? Well, the design of what’s in the car does not cup the buttocks well. So both myself and Mike were constantly having to brace to keep from crushing the jewels into the submarine harness. Well, bracing means I wasn’t able to use both feet while driving so weight transfer for cornering was hit-and-miss and ultimately slowed us down. I will get better seats in the car this winter for sure!
So we ran as hard as we could. But of all damn things. The instrument cluster fell out. I felt something hit my feet in the rockiest part of the course. Look down and there is my speedo sitting on my foot hanging by a wire. Can’t let that get ripped out it would kill the whole car. So we pulled over and disconnected it and made Mike hold on to it. Doing this I was nervous something would go wrong with the computer but no she ran fine except for one thing. No power steering. Yep the the X3 has multiple power steering settings and they come up on the dash when you select them. With it unplugged the power steering was just gone. SO 30 miles of rough steering lock to steering lock turning later we made it to the pits. My team had a fist full of zip ties and duct tape waiting and we put the dash back in the car and zip-tied it to a bar so it wouldn’t fall again. SUCCESS I had power steering again. One more lap to go and it was push as hard as we could. Ultimately…. 5th place. I can only imagine how much we lost with a belt, tire, and the damn speedo. Could it have been a podium? Maybe. Was it great to just finish that beast? Yes.
We raced one smaller local race for some cheap seat time after that but 40 miles is not an endurance race so we were just using it for car testing. We know what we need to fix and we have some great partners willing to help us get there.
2024.
I honestly can’t say a whole lot yet. We have some really big things in work but none of it is concrete yet. One piece is a beautiful little place called Mexico. Yeah that Mexico. Off Map Racing is going international. We have always wanted to run Mexico and the San Filipe 250 is a bucket list race. The whole Score series is a bucket list. Is that where we go for 2024? I’m not sure yet. I had a great plan for the 2024 season and then we went to SEMA. Sitting down with some of our partners opened some new doors and we just need to wait and see at this point. I know that is vague but if you’ve made it this far in what I promised would be short and you’re still reading…… Get Excited. 2024 is going to be our biggest year yet.
OFF MAP Racing 