Jagged X Racing | Team Profile
Feb. 28, 2019
UTVUG Staff
We got a chance to stop by Jagged X and get behind the scenes look on what it takes to run their race program. We also found out a ton of UTV racing history, and got a feel for what the early days of UTV racing were like.
Jagged X consists of Brandon Schueler and Bill Schueler, a father a son race team. Brandon does the racing, Bill takes care of the logistics to help Brandon get to the finish line.
Photo by http://instagram.com/deserttoyzracing/[/caption]
Brandon - The class was growing exponentially. There were five cars when we first started, and then the next race there were probably eight cars and then ten cars and so on. So it was expanding really fast. It was the premiere racing organization. No disrespect or anything to any of the other racing organizations, at that time SCORE wasn't allowing UTVs. So that wasn't an option, Best In the Desert was the best game in town.
Bill - To be honest with you and thank you to Cory Sappington, who was friends with the promoter, Casey Folks at Best In The Desert, and he kept on and kept on and kept on it. Then they actually formed an organization because the promoter, Casey didn't really want, or didn't really understand and didn't really want to embrace the UTVs, to such a great extent. So, Cory Sappington, along with a couple other guys, formed something called the UTV RA, or UTV Racing Association, it was sort of an intermediator, an organization to kind of help build the rules and build the sport and you know, take the sport to the next level and actually get it accepted. UTV RA was actually in existence until just a couple of years ago, Finally Casey said, no, we don't need UTV RA anymore. This is a legitimate class. Now it’s the largest class that we have and they can stand on their own.
just have not really been able to fit that into our schedule and have a car dedicated to race to King of the Hammers. We started supporting Brandon's co-driver Blake Van De Loo, who wanted to race that as his own standalone race. So we were supporting him. We supported him for the last several years And Blake won the race the year before last , and now this year we're back at it and fielding a car of our own.
Brandon - He started racing for us in Best In The Desert. One full season in 2012, I do believe, he had one full season in Best In The Desert, and then we came up with this Baja plan and Matt was all in.
Bill - Plus we had two cars that we were racing against each other and it was, a little bit of a conflict, but it was a lot of work too. We were trying to race both those two cars at the same events every time, you have to increase your pit sizes and everything else. So that's kind of when we got called out on going to Mexico and he's like, well, I like racing in Mexico. And so that's when we worked the deal. You go to Mexico and we'll go here and you know, we'll fund both things and we will come down there and help you out.
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Brandon - When we first started, if you finished a race in a UTV you basically won. When we first started. It’s changed drastically since then. Almost instantly when the RZR started getting popular. It became more and more reliable, you didn’t have to build them quite as extreme to be competitive.
The change has been so drastic in 10 years, if you were to park the 800 RZR next to the Turbo S you would think the 800 was an RC car, almost. The change has been so, so drastic.
Bill - Every new platform that Polaris has introduced since that 800 RZR has been like a whole new chapter in the book, and there’s no telling what’s going to happen next. I don’t remember what those cars had for ground clearance, but they came with 25” tires,
Brandon - When we did long travel, we added 6” per side, so we were just over a foot wider plus offset on the wheels. So we were running 27” tall tires, which was huuuge at that time, and now they come stock with 32” tires, turbo charged and nearly 200 horsepower, and how it’s changed it’s absolutely incredible.
Bill - When we got in a RZR for the very first time, you’d push on the gas and you went holy smoke. We were coming from a 26MPH rhino, and these things ran 55 miles per hour.
Brandon - It was crazy to go that fast, and we were like can they get any faster than this? Absolutely can. I’ve had my car close to 100 mph.
Bill - I mean Class 10 cars don’t go much faster than that. They creep just barely over a hundred miles per hour. As we encroach 100 miles per hour, we’re going to stay in that top echelon of vehicles for these races. You know, having four wheel drive obviously makes a huge difference, well in any of the desert racing.
Brandon - Especially at those softer races, Baja races, Silver state is usually pretty bad, Parker too. It’s pretty incredible what you can pick through, it’s a nice tight, compact little car, four wheel drive, and you don’t really have to worry about silt beds. I mean trenches mess you up, but it is what it is. You just kind of pick your line and truck along.
Brandon - If that. He gets a phone call around 11 “where are you at?” To which he’ll reply “I’m at at my actual job, where I make a living, I’ll be there at some point”.
Bill - No, you actually want to know what Brandon’s itinerary for a normal day.
Brandon - I’m here every day. Some days are harder than others. But it’s prepping the cars, we do have a customers car here that we’re doing a full race prep on. He’s actually planning on racing the whole racing series, so before every race we want to make sure his car is top notch and ready to go. We go testing with him if needed, typically we will do that out of town somewhere. And then obviously we’ve got my car.
So order all the parts, reply to emails and calls and all the office stuff. But the stuff in the shop, is the race car and the race prep. Tear it down make sure nothing’s broken, and go through and repair all the CVs, all the clutches, we go through the transmission and differentials. Motor stuff typically stays the same, but check for any cracks in the frame and suspension, go through all the shocks, axles all that stuff. Tear down the car, put it back together. And by that time it’s time to race again. If we have four weeks, we take four weeks, if we have two weeks, we take two weeks. You always run out of time.
Bill - Yeah, the days become increasingly longer as it gets closer to the race. Every time. Every. Time.
Brandon - But yeah, that’s part of the deal. Then there’s chase truck prep. Then there’s motorhomes and trailers that have to get loaded and looked over too. Just kind of depends on the race, every race is a little bit different. You finish a race, you look at the next one, and you try and put a game plan together and figure out a way to handle all of that.
Brandon - Yeah, absolutely. It's just, it adds a whole different element of racing that we weren't used to when we are racing in the states. So the Baja 1000, obviously is the iconic race, people that don't know anything about desert racing, know about the Baja 1000, and that’s why. It's because it is just that, it’s the most challenging desert race out there.
So for me, the best race that we've ever done, the most flawless race, hands down 50th Baja 1000. Which makes it that much more special. It was an anniversary run. It was a point to point run. We had a flawless day doing it. We had a great team behind us, but nonetheless, everyone did exactly what they're supposed to do with it. It panned out. It worked out.
You know, being, you know, having to restart the race every day and you start in your finishing position and then if you take more than your allotted hour, that time played against you the next day. That was logistically, probably one of the most difficult races we ever did. That's exciting for me cause I get to handle most of the logistics.
Brandon - That was pretty early on in our careers too. I think that was 2009 that they did that. I mean we were pretty new in the game too and we had just a couple of seasons under our belt. I have a hard time counting our first season cause we didn't fare very well. So really only a couple of seasons under our belt and it's like, oh, get thrown this big deal. At that point we weren’t racing in Baja or anything like that. In Vegas to Reno, we'd done well in that race. We won that race, but it’s the same thing. It went down to us and that Arctic cat. There were three days of racing. It was thousand miles. It was minutes apart is it was just minutes apart in the end.
Bill - Right to the end, yeah, right to the end. But yeah, that was one of the more exciting races, typically the longer races are super exciting. A lot lot happens in those long races.
Brandon - There’s a lot of stuff that you got to think about and if you're not in the right place at the right time you can mess everyone up.
Bill - I think we won that race. I think we've won Vegas to Reno five times.
Brandon - There’s a special spot, I think in our team and our team's heart. That is Vegas to Reno. It’s a good race.
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Bill - It's fun. It’s always a fun one. Lots of pits. Again, lots of, lots of logistics, lots of strategy and that's important. It’s way more than than just show up the starting line and just go and hammer down. Desert racing is not drag racing by any stretch of the imagination. There's a lot of planning that goes in leading up to the race. There's a lot of strategy that goes into the race.
Brandon - Lot of patience.
Bill - You can find yourself, well this year is a perfect example. At the 1000 we started second but 15 miles in, we had a major mechanical and by the time we were fixed we were the last car on course and battled our way back to 11 place.
Brandon - Four or five, 11th’s [places] last year.
Bill - Yeah. So that was the patience part of it. You know, you have, you have to keep digging. Even if you're behind, you have to keep digging because everybody out there is facing the same terrain and all the same challenges. If you do a few things better, you can be back in the race before you know it. We try to do that well.
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How long has been Brandon racing?
Bill - Brandon started racing in 2006. That’s when we actually started racing, and it was UTVs. He actually never raced anything besides a UTV. We had a rule in the family and my wife and their mother forbid racing in the family, it was not going to happen.
How did that change with UTVs?
Bill - So Justin(Brandon’s brother) and Brandon started doing fab work out of the garage basically when they were still in high school. They started working on jeeps and on golf carts and peoples quads and various different things. Just kind of learning some skills and whatnot. They both had a pretty good eye for fabrication. As that grew along came the introduction of the UTV, which started as the Yamaha Rhino and they were working on a lot of Yamaha Rhinos cause it was a real popular vehicle. [gallery link="file" columns="2" size="medium" ids="65850,65849"] It was kind of the start of the whole UTV explosion, if you will. They were doing full custom builds on Yamaha Rhinos, and then suddenly a couple of guys started actually racing in various different races. When my wife who refuses to accept the fact that she's competitive is actually competitive, but she just won’t admit it. She said one day “They're racing UTVs??” Like, yeah, they're racing UTVs “Well, if they're racing UTVs, you guys should be out there racing to get your name out there” and that was a hall pass that the family needed. So within a matter of weeks, a Rhino that they owned had been converted, and basically dismantled and reassembled as a race car and was ready for its first race.What was the first race Brandon competed in?
Bill - I think it was the first Best In The Desert Parker 250 that allowed UTVs, which I do believe was in 2006. There were 5 UTVs. Brandon - I DNF-ed on lap two when I ripped an A-arm out of the frame. Bill - But I think that was the first race we raced, we did a couple of Whiplash races after that, but Parker 250 was the first race.
What made you want race in Best In The Desert instead of race series?
Bill - It was a much more organized venue and organization for racing. It seemed to get a little more national attention potentially. It was a bigger show I guess. We did race a few smaller races in different organizations, while they were fun, they were very disorganized and they seemed to be more of a, I guess a hobby weekender kind of a racing organization. We kind of saw the value in a better, more structured organization and Best In The Desert was already that. At that point we were trying to become the “go to”guys for UTV’s, we figured there would be more exposure with a larger organization, like Best In The Desert. [caption id="attachment_66150" align="alignright" width="320"] Photo by http://instagram.com/deserttoyzracing/[/caption]
Brandon - The class was growing exponentially. There were five cars when we first started, and then the next race there were probably eight cars and then ten cars and so on. So it was expanding really fast. It was the premiere racing organization. No disrespect or anything to any of the other racing organizations, at that time SCORE wasn't allowing UTVs. So that wasn't an option, Best In the Desert was the best game in town.
Bill - To be honest with you and thank you to Cory Sappington, who was friends with the promoter, Casey Folks at Best In The Desert, and he kept on and kept on and kept on it. Then they actually formed an organization because the promoter, Casey didn't really want, or didn't really understand and didn't really want to embrace the UTVs, to such a great extent. So, Cory Sappington, along with a couple other guys, formed something called the UTV RA, or UTV Racing Association, it was sort of an intermediator, an organization to kind of help build the rules and build the sport and you know, take the sport to the next level and actually get it accepted. UTV RA was actually in existence until just a couple of years ago, Finally Casey said, no, we don't need UTV RA anymore. This is a legitimate class. Now it’s the largest class that we have and they can stand on their own.
Has Brandon competed in any short course races?
Bill - No, it’s because our schedule between racing, once we started racing Mexico, that added several races a year to our schedule and our schedule got to where it's just not feasible. This year we are doing King of the Hammers, that's a standalone race, I mean it is part of a series, but it stands on its own as far as, uh, you know, a big event. Yeah. So we're doing that race. We want to represent Polaris and represent our sponsors and hopefully win.Has Brandon ever raced King of the Hammers?
Bill - Actually yes, when they started racing UTVs at King of the Hammers, we were at the very first one, the first year they allowed UTVs. We raced three years in a row. Brandon finished third his first year, then second, and then his last year that he raced he won it. Granted there were way less cars then, you know, but there was still a bunch, I think the year he won, I think there were 40 or so cars, it was still a pretty big field. Since then we
just have not really been able to fit that into our schedule and have a car dedicated to race to King of the Hammers. We started supporting Brandon's co-driver Blake Van De Loo, who wanted to race that as his own standalone race. So we were supporting him. We supported him for the last several years And Blake won the race the year before last , and now this year we're back at it and fielding a car of our own.
What made you guys want to race the Baja races?
Bill - We were actually persuaded by our sponsor Polaris to go and race in Baja. We've been called out by several other teams that were racing in Baja. Basically they were like “Hey, if you guys think you guys can race, you guys need to really, need to come down and race in Mexico cause that's the real deal” and so we went down to Mexico. The first year we raced in Mexico was 2013, and we won the series ha ha. Bill - The first year that we went down to Mexico, we actually formed another team basically within our team. So we had two squads, if you will. We had a Mexico squad and the US squad. Brandon racing here in the states and Matt Parks who was a previous employee of Polaris and a veteran Baja racer. We basically worked a deal with him to be our driver of record in Mexico.
Brandon - He started racing for us in Best In The Desert. One full season in 2012, I do believe, he had one full season in Best In The Desert, and then we came up with this Baja plan and Matt was all in.
Bill - Plus we had two cars that we were racing against each other and it was, a little bit of a conflict, but it was a lot of work too. We were trying to race both those two cars at the same events every time, you have to increase your pit sizes and everything else. So that's kind of when we got called out on going to Mexico and he's like, well, I like racing in Mexico. And so that's when we worked the deal. You go to Mexico and we'll go here and you know, we'll fund both things and we will come down there and help you out.
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How did the relationship with Polaris and Craig Scanlon form? When did you start racing in a Polaris RZR?
Bill - Craig is actually one of the first contacts that we ever made with Polaris when they walked in here the very first time and interviewed us. It was Craig and one of the engineers Jim that walked in and sat at this desk. We had been in this office for a week. We had just purchased this building. Brandon - It was kind of a dead rush. We were working out of the back of my dad's shop and we've kind of outgrown it and it was time to move. So we bought this place and we got a phone call during the move and build process from someone at Polaris. I think it was Craig and it was basically “We want to come visit you guys”. I hung up the phone and I’m like I got a phone call from Polaris, and they want to come visit us. I hope it’s not a bad thing.. So it was a dead sprint to get in this office. I think we were in this office for a week, it looked immaculate. The place was perfect. It was spotless. It was brand new, a brand new building. Awesome fully filled show room, clean back shop. A clean bathroom. It didn't look like a shop. It looked like a brand new building. It looked good and so we sat down and had our meeting with them, and what’s funny about the meeting they're like, okay, you guys, you're allowed two people in the meeting, and it’s like we’re a three man team it’s me, my dad, my brother. That's a package deal. That's how it works. They said only two of you could be in the meeting and we’re like, well, unless they're all going to be here, none of us are going to see the meeting. Okay, we’ll let it slide, here, you need to sign this. Bill - It was like men in black. I thought they were going to flash us with that pen and erase our memories. But long story short, the meeting was about the introduction of the RZR at that point and nobody had seen the RZR yet and they were looking for basically aftermarket development partners, to basically go along with the launch of the RZR so that they had people in the aftermarket that were already familiar with the vehicle and could help to promote the vehicle as the new latest, greatest thing, which we did, and it did work, because it is. Part of the deal was, we got a couple of RZRs to customize and then, about a week into the deal, they call us again and said “Hey, you know, we're looking at all your stuff here and it looks like you guys are a racing a Yamaha Rhino, that doesn’t really work for us. Can you race one of these RZRs in the class that you’re racing?” And I said I think we can. So we had to create another race car, the very first racing RZR ever built. That was it. That was ours. Brandon - In three weeks, Yea our next race was in three weeks, they were like “Can you get this done?” And we said we’re going to have to. Bill - That was the Pahrump Nugget 250 in 2007. It was at the end of 2007, wait, was that in November or December? They’ve must of changed dates on it cause it was earlier. Brandon - Oh it was earlier, wasn’t it? Because we raced Parker in a Rhino. Yeah, whole new graphic scheme, we redid everything on the rhino we had just repainted it and then we got the news that we need to build the rzr. So we raced Parker, we DNF-ed that race of course, because that’s what we did in a Rhino. Bill - Ha ha, and then we showed up next race, that was the second race of the year at the time, we showed up in a Polaris RZR. Brandon - It was stock suspension, we didn’t have the time to do long travel on it. We had a set of aftermarket shocks for it that we bolted on, that I’m pretty sure they blew up in the first hundred miles or so, not even, so we put a set of stock shocks back on it and it was a rough race. I was actually supposed to drive at that first race in Pahrump in the RZR , but I was still in high school, so I decided I was going to go to prom instead, prom fell on the same weekend as that and I was supposed to go prom, and because of the whole girlfriend thing you’re supposed to do that kind of stuff, so my dad said “okay, you’re not going to be there? Looks like I’m going racing.” so my dad filled in my spot and then I ended up not going to prom and I tried getting my seat back and he said no. He wouldn’t give me my seat back, he said “you were going to go to prom and I’m racing now”. So he and Blake Van De Loo ended up taking the RZR to the finish line and took fourth in the very first race. We had no test time in the car, I mean out of the box, stock shocks, had a fuel cell, cage and seats, pretty much as stock as they can get. Bill - We blew a belt before the first pit stop, I think mile 19. We made the first pit closing time by three seconds, back then we started behind everybody[all the classes] and then we caught up along the way and we ended up being okay. Brandon - But that was kind of the storyline of UTV racing when we first started racing, we chased pit closing times. We started at the back of the pack and it was literally that. I mean, you have one problem and then you’re chasing those times from then on out for the rest of the day, the night, whatever it is and you're just hoping that you could make up a little bit of time to get ahead of that clock. And we just barely had enough time to finish the race. We used the maximum amount time.
Brandon - When we first started, if you finished a race in a UTV you basically won. When we first started. It’s changed drastically since then. Almost instantly when the RZR started getting popular. It became more and more reliable, you didn’t have to build them quite as extreme to be competitive.
The change has been so drastic in 10 years, if you were to park the 800 RZR next to the Turbo S you would think the 800 was an RC car, almost. The change has been so, so drastic.
Bill - Every new platform that Polaris has introduced since that 800 RZR has been like a whole new chapter in the book, and there’s no telling what’s going to happen next. I don’t remember what those cars had for ground clearance, but they came with 25” tires,
Brandon - When we did long travel, we added 6” per side, so we were just over a foot wider plus offset on the wheels. So we were running 27” tall tires, which was huuuge at that time, and now they come stock with 32” tires, turbo charged and nearly 200 horsepower, and how it’s changed it’s absolutely incredible.
Bill - When we got in a RZR for the very first time, you’d push on the gas and you went holy smoke. We were coming from a 26MPH rhino, and these things ran 55 miles per hour.
Brandon - It was crazy to go that fast, and we were like can they get any faster than this? Absolutely can. I’ve had my car close to 100 mph.
Bill - I mean Class 10 cars don’t go much faster than that. They creep just barely over a hundred miles per hour. As we encroach 100 miles per hour, we’re going to stay in that top echelon of vehicles for these races. You know, having four wheel drive obviously makes a huge difference, well in any of the desert racing.
Brandon - Especially at those softer races, Baja races, Silver state is usually pretty bad, Parker too. It’s pretty incredible what you can pick through, it’s a nice tight, compact little car, four wheel drive, and you don’t really have to worry about silt beds. I mean trenches mess you up, but it is what it is. You just kind of pick your line and truck along.
Speaking of the new car, you’ve been posting on social media about it, do you want to say anything about that?
Brandon - Other than that we’re excited about it, we think it’s an awesome platform. Our plan is not to change the suspension geometry at all. Polaris has done an awesome job with that. They’ve got a lot of time and effort designing that suspension that works really well, there’s no reason to change it. We’re not going any wider or anything with it. With that said, I think it’s going to be a really sweet platform. We’re building it a little different than my current race car, but I’m not reinventing the wheel at all. When we built that other car, we built it in a huge time crunch, it was slap the car together get it on the race track. Bill - We took a few shortcuts we normally wouldn’t when we build a race car. Brandon - I never took the time to change them how I normally would build a car. That’s constantly in the back of my mind. That car works, and it performs well, it does everything it needs to do. It’s just as strong. It’s just built differently than I normally would build a race car.What does a typical day at Jagged X look like?
Bill - I roll out out of bed about 8 or so, have some coffee on the patio, walk the dog, do a few honey do’s around the house, do a little gardening. I roll in around 11.
Brandon - If that. He gets a phone call around 11 “where are you at?” To which he’ll reply “I’m at at my actual job, where I make a living, I’ll be there at some point”.
Bill - No, you actually want to know what Brandon’s itinerary for a normal day.
Brandon - I’m here every day. Some days are harder than others. But it’s prepping the cars, we do have a customers car here that we’re doing a full race prep on. He’s actually planning on racing the whole racing series, so before every race we want to make sure his car is top notch and ready to go. We go testing with him if needed, typically we will do that out of town somewhere. And then obviously we’ve got my car.
So order all the parts, reply to emails and calls and all the office stuff. But the stuff in the shop, is the race car and the race prep. Tear it down make sure nothing’s broken, and go through and repair all the CVs, all the clutches, we go through the transmission and differentials. Motor stuff typically stays the same, but check for any cracks in the frame and suspension, go through all the shocks, axles all that stuff. Tear down the car, put it back together. And by that time it’s time to race again. If we have four weeks, we take four weeks, if we have two weeks, we take two weeks. You always run out of time.
Bill - Yeah, the days become increasingly longer as it gets closer to the race. Every time. Every. Time.
Brandon - But yeah, that’s part of the deal. Then there’s chase truck prep. Then there’s motorhomes and trailers that have to get loaded and looked over too. Just kind of depends on the race, every race is a little bit different. You finish a race, you look at the next one, and you try and put a game plan together and figure out a way to handle all of that.
What was your favorite race?
Brandon - For me, I have to say it was the 50th Baja 1000 was my favorite race for sure. It’s the Baja races. They’re exciting still, we haven't been doing it for long enough to know any of the course or anything that they've thrown at us. We're learning it as time goes on. The races are challenging. The competition is challenging. The pit strategy is super important.. Bill - The environment is challenging.
Brandon - Yeah, absolutely. It's just, it adds a whole different element of racing that we weren't used to when we are racing in the states. So the Baja 1000, obviously is the iconic race, people that don't know anything about desert racing, know about the Baja 1000, and that’s why. It's because it is just that, it’s the most challenging desert race out there.
So for me, the best race that we've ever done, the most flawless race, hands down 50th Baja 1000. Which makes it that much more special. It was an anniversary run. It was a point to point run. We had a flawless day doing it. We had a great team behind us, but nonetheless, everyone did exactly what they're supposed to do with it. It panned out. It worked out.
Same goes for you Bill, Baja?
Bill - Yeah pretty much. I mean without a doubt that has been the most significant race that we've ever raced. Without a doubt. There was another point to point Baja race, maybe it was in 2014 or 2015. It was a point to point Baja 1000 and it was a long Baja 1000. It was 1200 and some odd miles. Our philosophy going into the race was, hey, we're going to race our own race, we're not going to worry about what everybody else is doing and we are just going to get down to La Paz and if we do everything we're supposed to do, we'll be on the podium. And it was a good philosophy. Well, we weren't 50 miles into the race and we suddenly found ourselves in a 1200 mile drag race with Johnny Angal, who's one of our racing rivals and we literally raced foot to the wood, flat out for 1200 miles and swapped the lead countless times. Rebuilt our car on the course. He rebuilt his car on the course. We actually tangled wheels and crashed and rolled the car with him. [gallery link="file" ids="21992,21994,21995,21997,21996,21999,21998,22019,22085,22020,22013,22009,22001,22000,22002,22003" orderby="rand"] Brandon - While trying to pass him. Bill - Yeah, trying to pass him, and after 1200 and however many miles, we ended up within three minutes of each other at the finish and we were second. But that was a pretty memorable race as well. That was a pretty exciting race. Bill - I’ve got say some of the most exciting races are the Baja races. Vegas to Reno is always a great event. One year Casey folks put together what he called Vegas to Reno the long way. It was a three day staged event. So you actually started and finished three days in a row, and then you bivouac at night and they would give you an hour to work on your car. That was also a super exciting race.
You know, being, you know, having to restart the race every day and you start in your finishing position and then if you take more than your allotted hour, that time played against you the next day. That was logistically, probably one of the most difficult races we ever did. That's exciting for me cause I get to handle most of the logistics.
Brandon - That was pretty early on in our careers too. I think that was 2009 that they did that. I mean we were pretty new in the game too and we had just a couple of seasons under our belt. I have a hard time counting our first season cause we didn't fare very well. So really only a couple of seasons under our belt and it's like, oh, get thrown this big deal. At that point we weren’t racing in Baja or anything like that. In Vegas to Reno, we'd done well in that race. We won that race, but it’s the same thing. It went down to us and that Arctic cat. There were three days of racing. It was thousand miles. It was minutes apart is it was just minutes apart in the end.
Bill - Right to the end, yeah, right to the end. But yeah, that was one of the more exciting races, typically the longer races are super exciting. A lot lot happens in those long races.
Brandon - There’s a lot of stuff that you got to think about and if you're not in the right place at the right time you can mess everyone up.
Bill - I think we won that race. I think we've won Vegas to Reno five times.
Brandon - There’s a special spot, I think in our team and our team's heart. That is Vegas to Reno. It’s a good race.
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Bill - It's fun. It’s always a fun one. Lots of pits. Again, lots of, lots of logistics, lots of strategy and that's important. It’s way more than than just show up the starting line and just go and hammer down. Desert racing is not drag racing by any stretch of the imagination. There's a lot of planning that goes in leading up to the race. There's a lot of strategy that goes into the race.
Brandon - Lot of patience.
Bill - You can find yourself, well this year is a perfect example. At the 1000 we started second but 15 miles in, we had a major mechanical and by the time we were fixed we were the last car on course and battled our way back to 11 place.
Brandon - Four or five, 11th’s [places] last year.
Bill - Yeah. So that was the patience part of it. You know, you have, you have to keep digging. Even if you're behind, you have to keep digging because everybody out there is facing the same terrain and all the same challenges. If you do a few things better, you can be back in the race before you know it. We try to do that well.
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Speaking of which, I’ve only gotten to chase a race with you guys, as far as being embedded in a team. Does that happen a lot, where there’s a major mechanical failure, is it common for a race team to be prepared and ready to fix something like that? Or are some teams just throwing in the towel and going home?
Bill - Every team is a little different. Some teams are not prepared to make a repair like that. I mean there might be, but there's a lot of the teams down there that wouldn't have been prepared to make that repair period and it would cost them the race. Brandon - Whether they don't have the parts, or they don't have to people. Have the knowledge to fix it, the communication, that kind of stuff happens. If their trucks were in different spots, for example, at 15 miles, you don't expect your car to break down. If your truck is there early and you don't have sat phones, you don't have communication, you don't have anything to be able to get in contact with those guys. They're broke with a mechanical failure, with no communications, with any of your team for however long. And they miss that pit closing time or that checkpoint closing time, or by the time they get it fixed, they'll miss it. Bill - It’s game over. Brandon - So we actually got pretty lucky in the fact that we had a truck in the right place at the right time and was able to get a truck to an access point, close enough to get it fixed. We could get it fixed at that point. Sometimes it's a game of luck, but being prepared and trying to think of all worst case scenarios is really your safest bet.What’s your biggest takeaway since you started racing?
Bill - Keep your sponsors happy, ha ha. Brandon - I think the community of racers are awesome and to not burn any of those bridges, I think is huge, huge aspect of it. You may have a name or a, you know, an image that goes along with you, but we try to respect all the racers. It doesn't matter if they're a competitor or a different brand. It doesn't, we try and treat all of them the same and I think that's, that's something that I, I like about that UTV community that I don't necessarily know happens in any other form of racing. That's something that we as a team try and pride ourselves in is that if someone comes in our pit and they’re a UTV racer or any racer for that matter and they need something and we can help with, and that is a resource that we can help them with, we will do that. Bill - Perfect example of that is the year before Matt Parks began racing for our team. He raced his own car against us against us in the same class. Matt Parks came into our pit, at, I want to say it was either Vegas to Reno or Silver state. I don't remember which one it was. His pit crew was AWOL, they were nowhere to be found and he was out of gas and I fueled his car and he beat us. He won the championship that year. It was only because that happened and had I not fueled that car for him. He would have had to sit there and wait for either somebody else to fuel him or his team show up and he would not have beaten us at that race and we would have won the championship. So that's how, that's how close it can be. I mean, and I would do it for him again, I'd like to think that because of that, I think Karma would say that people would do it for us too.
Did you guys know Matt Parks before that?
Bill - We knew him through Polaris, he worked at Polaris and stuff, so yeah. We knew who he was. Brandon - We battled with him a lot. He was a good racer. Bill - Yeah, Matt Parks is fast. Brandon - Yeah. Just one of those things. It's like you go to the start line and you're thinking about, okay, who, who are the guys that I really need to pay attention to? Matt was always on that list, constantly. That's like, Matt is going to be someone to contend with this race, period. End The story. At all races. He was one of the guys that you paid attention to and so we knew of it. We battled with them and, we had got to know him actually pretty well. And you know, again, there's a lot of people in the class now, but it's a pretty small family. Everyone knows everyone. Bill - So yeah, that whole thing that kind of came down to, if you can’t beat them, then just then just take him onto your team, adopt him, appropriate him as a resource.The Bi product is that we are now great friends. The camaraderie in the UTV community is good, it really is. We've got a lot of good friends that are even with competing brands, we have a great time racing with them. Murray’s that race for Can-Am I mean, God, those guys are like I think some of our better racing friends, I know that they'd do anything to help us and vice versa. Bill - I think as far a takeaway, in the beginning I don’t think we had any idea this would turn into a career for Brandon, and a lucrative business that would turn in this direction, and we’re thankful. We’re thankful for all the sponsors that have helped us along the way. That means a lot to us, we couldn’t have done it without a lot of them. Obviously without Polaris for sure.Who are the sponsors for this year?
Brandon - Pretty much the same as last year, we did add a few. But we've got these companies on board with us.- Polaris Industries
- BFGoodrich Tires
- KC Lights
- OMF Performance
- Walker Evans Racing
- CR Designs
- Factory UTV
- Hostyle Racing
- Pro Eagle
- Mountain States Contracting
- Cognito Motorsport
- PRP Seats
- Rugged Race Radios
- Monster Seal