Polaris has just delivered the strongest message to off-road fans that SXS racing is not only here to stay but is the class to watch with the announcement of Evans Motorsport now partnering in the management of the Polaris Racing Australia factory team.
With seven Australian Rally Championships between them, Cody Crocker and Simon Evans will spearhead the Victorian-based team and will launch an attack on the legendary Finke Desert Race and contest the SXS Australian Championship which engages drivers in wheel to wheel battles around MX circuits.
The team will race production based Polaris RZR XP Turbo vehicles which combine light weight, long travel suspension and 168HP in stock form to provide an amazing spectacle for fans.
It will be the fourth year for the fledgling series and since debuting on Channel Nine in 2017 and again for 2018, the series provides sponsors with one of the few opportunities to see their brands on prime time television at an affordable level when compared to many other sports attracting main stream television exposure.
More champions from other disciplines are gravitating towards this series and it is unsurprising due to the relatively low cost, sponsor rewards and the shear racing experience in one of its most aggressive and raw forms.
“Like most great plans, the ideas flowed over a beer”, said rally legend Simon Evans in his usual jovial manner. “Turns out Polaris and I were thinking the same thing and we pretty much had it worked out before the hangover kicked in. I raced the whole series in 2017 after getting a taste in 2016 and I just love it, it is an absolute blast”.
Cody Crocker, 2016 SXS Championship winner and another rally legend, was equally excited about the next level of this sport, “I sat out the first year assisting Polaris with getting the series established but I couldn’t do that forever and I was getting edgy at every event. It was a new experience for me moving from the high speeds and precision of rallying to the added dimension of massive jumps and the rough and tumble of banging wheels with other racers but racing is racing and so is winning”.
Crocker has an axe to grind after finishing runner up in 2017, “The luck didn’t go our way a couple of times in 2017 despite winning many races and one of the rounds. The competition is so tough now you can’t afford to have a DNF for any reason, so we’ll take those learnings into 2018 and get the Championship back again”.
With these two champions in the Polaris Racing stable, the question gets asked about team orders. The response was the same from both drivers, “No team orders, we are both here to win the championship”. Should be a very interesting outcome!
