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Pictures from Monza Rally Show 2016
NEWS

Casey Currie VS the Monza Rally Show

Dec 042016

Meet Casey Currie; desert racer, short-course legend, and all round good guy. With a racing résumé bursting with wins on motorcycles, trucks and buggies, the 30-year-old Californian is a heavy hitter in the dirt-racing scene. Born into a motorsports family in the Anaheim Hills of Southern California, Currie has always been drawn to anything with an engine. 

Certainly, it’s no surprise to discover that by the age of five he was racing motorcycles, and by 16 he jumped behind the wheel of his first race truck.
What you might not know though, is that Currie also runs his own workshop – designing and fabricating the trucks he campaigns in the Lucas Oils Off Road Series; used to be a factory driver for Nissan; and juggles a full time competition programme alongside his family life.

As a first time visitor to the awesome Monza Rally Show, we caught up with Currie to grab his thoughts on the event, and mixing up the traditional rally machinery on track with his 600bhp Pro-Lite ride… .

Monza Rally Show Photos from Saturday

Hey Casey, it’s awesome to have you here – can you give us some background on how you got into racing, and how has it progressed from there?

My parents and my grandfather own an off-road business so I’ve always been around it and then I raced motorcycles from the age of 5 years old until 15 years old. When I was 13 my dad built us an off road Jeep. We went out, won a championship or two. After that I won a lot of races and that really fuelled my passion; and I knew I wanted to do it for living. Right when I went to the college I made the decision to start riding motorcycles professionally, and through that I ended up getting a factory Nissan ride for off road truck racing and from there it just took off. Being the same as other drivers and teams was never good enough for me so we’ve always expanded and grown and taken the sport to new levels. You know it’s always been my passion and that’s why I’ve grown as much as I have, we tried so hard to work outside the box. I’m 30 years old and don’t see the end of it, we race a lot and I love it.

Monza Rally Show Photos from Saturday

Tell us about the truck you brought here this weekend?

The truck that I brought to Monza is a two-seat short course stadium truck. Normally they have one seat but we customized it in order to have 2 passengers seated. It’s 600 horsepower. The chassis is built at my shop by my guys. It has got 12 inches of suspension travel in the front, and 14 in the back. It’s got an automatic transmission three-speed. It’s made to be in a stadium atmosphere with a lot of jumps. So the truck is made to jump 120 feet without ever braking and doing it over over and over again so it’s super durable. We race with 30 trucks at a time so it’s like motocross where everybody is together; banging and tearing body panels off and literally going nuts. So that is the kind of racing this truck is made for. It’s made for 100% dirt and no tarmac. So we’re definitely stepping outside the boundaries here.

Monza Rally Show Photos from Saturday

Your team builds it from scratch, right?

Yes we designed and fabricated the chassis and the whole set up that we race at our shop in Corona.

Monza Rally Show Photos from Saturday

Why doesn’t it have a windshield or windows?

In off-road we have so much dirt flying up from the car in front of us, the windshield wipers wouldn’t be able to keep up, so we don’t run windows at all. I do wear tear-offs on my helmet; when you do 100 miles an hour you feel it on your face!

Monza Rally Show Photos from Saturday

So it’s really like motocross with a car..

Absolutely, it really is! It’s motocross with trucks

Who have you got supporting you this weekend…

I brought my brother Cody who is my manager right now. Then Kyle, he’s my photographer, Evan is here to oversee the race truck and make sure the truck is all-good; it’s a tight crew.

Did you and Baggsy know each other before you met here at Monza?

No, the first time I met Baggsy was Thursday when I got in. We’ve texted a couple of times over the past couple of weeks, he gave me some information, told me what I need and don’t need. We hit it off and his guys and my guys are super similar to my team, so it didn’t take long to get along and have fun together.

Profile picture of Casey

Apart from racing what do you like to do in your free time?

I like to go off-roading. I’m passionate about Jeeping. I like to go exploring, camping, I have two little boys and I like to hang out with my family as much as I can. They love off-roading already so any chance we’re home, like thanksgiving weekend, we were in the desert and I tried to teach them how to ride motorcycles and give them rides, so the passion for racing is kind of bred through the family. My Dad did the same, he is still into it as much as I am, and he goes to a lot of my races still so it’s very family oriented.

Is this your first time in Italy?

This is my first time in Europe at all, I’ve never travelled over this way before. I never had the opportunity as I was always too busy trying to build up my career in the US. So I’m quite excited actually to be here with one of my cars and be driving.

What do you think about The Monza Rally Show?

The Monza Rally is amazing, the amount of people, the media.. it’s incredible. Even early on the Friday the media line to drive the cars for stage one was insane. I’ve never been to an event with Valentino Rossi before either – the amount of people that stand in front of his motorhome is incredible, I mean, I’ve been around a lot of top athletes in sports and this is the first time that I see people standing in front of an RV that he’s not even coming out of at like 6.30am in the morning, so it’s incredible to see how passionate the fans are here in Italy.

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