As our rider ripped around...
As our rider ripped around the track, the throaty exhaust tone and nimble handling caught the attention of many spectators.
Our test rider, Caide Hunt, came all the way down from Utah to put in a few hard laps on our revamped racer, and at every break she came off with a smile. Caide has been racing the WORCS series for quite a few years now on an older DRR model and most recently a Polaris Outlaw 90. When asked how the handling was compared to either of those machines, she said it was a night-and-day difference. It didn't take long at all for her to get comfortable on the 90 as she took a few practice rolls on a double before hammering the throttle out of a corner and using the explosive new power to easily land on the downside of the jump. Even on one occasion where she came up short on one of the jumps, she was surprised at how well the combination of the Fox shocks and DC Motorsports suspension components absorbed the hit.
With her coming off of a four-stroke engine in her previous race machine, I wondered how long it would take for Caide to adapt to the high-revving two-stroke beast that we caged in this frame. Again, Caide quickly adapted to the transition as we went over to one of the smaller tracks and let it all hang out. From a fast, wide, sweeping turn to a tight 180-degree switchback, she quickly became comfortable with the power delivery and began burning laps around the track. Earlier in the day, photographer Adam Campbell had his doubts on how much action we'd be able to get from a 90cc youth quad, but by the end of our shoot he was surprised and excited from the awesome pictures he was capturing through his lens as Caide blasted off of berms and soared over jumps.
By the end of the day it was easy to see that all of the components on this project worked perfectly in unison to build a very fast and well-handling youth race ATV. After our photo shoot, Caide rode our modded DRR 90 to a fourth place finish in her class at Round 6 of the WORCS series held at Straddleline ORV in Olympia, Washington. Aside from the small amount of testing and time we had for the photo shoot, this was her first chance to truly put the hammer down on the new quad. Other than a few minute suspension tweaks, she felt that our DRR was perfect and she was looking forward to getting more seat time and putting our machine up on the podium.
So our goal was to build a top-notch youth race ATV, and from the looks and results we've garnered, we reached and even surpassed our goal. While the price tag of everything done isn't cheap, when you look at the sea of mini race ATVs on the starting lines, it is a requirement if you want to be the leader into the first corner and at the checkered flag.