TRUCK MASTER : Walker Evans’ Operation Grows With Sport
The growth of off-road racing from its infancy in 1969 to its stature among motor sports today can be seen in the growth of Walker Evans’ garage.
When Evans, 50, the pre-eminent truck driver among off-road racers, built his first Ford racing pickup 20 years ago, he did it in his family’s back-yard garage of about 1,100 square feet.
Today, three shops later, his racing team occupies a 10,000-square-foot garage with a crew of 17 full-time employees. And on the drafting board is a 25,000-foot shop he has planned for a three-acre site on the west side of town alongside Highway 60.
The new site will have its own practice course in the sandy wasteland of the Santa Ana River.
“The way I look at it, the future of off-road racing is unlimited,” Evans said. “We may have gone as far as we can with desert racing, which I might add is my true love, but I see stadium racing continuing to grow until it becomes a world-wide sport. It has the same potential as motocross, perhaps even more so, because more people drive cars and trucks than ride cycles, and motocross has an international following. Stadium racing is really still a very young sport.”
Stadium racing, which was the brainchild of the late Mickey Thompson, did not evolve until 1979, when the first event was held in the Coliseum.
“Even after I retire, which will probably be after next year, I plan to continue running a team. I would like to be the Roger Penske of off-road racing.”
Evans’ introduction to off-roading came in 1969 as a driver for actor James Garner’s American Motors team in a Rambler sedan in the Baja 500. He finished third in his class, but was fascinated by the winning pickup driven by Ak Miller.
“Garner folded his team, but I was hooked and I knew I had to get a pickup and race some more in the desert. The only way was to build my own, so that’s what I did.”
In 1970, with help from Bill Stroppe, a pioneer in the sport as a builder of Ford off-road vehicles, Evans built his first pickup for a few thousand dollars. He won the truck class in the first race he drove it, the 1970 Baja 500.
Today, Evans directs a six-truck team that is divided between desert and stadium racing--with Evans the star attraction driving either a 4,400-pound Dodge Ram 150 at speeds of 130 m.p.h. across a dry lake or bouncing a nimble 2,550-pound Jeep Comanche over man-made jumps and bumps in a stadium.
The trucks he drives today cost between $100,000 and $120,000 each.
“My whole life is dictated by the racing schedule,” Evans said as he checked the race and prerun dates in his office. “The season starts in January with the Anaheim Stadium race and doesn’t end until November with the Baja 1000.”
It was the 1979 Baja 1000--which Evans drove solo from Ensenada to La Paz in a huge stock Dodge truck and beat the nimble desert buggies built exclusively for high-speed racing across Baja’s changing terrain--that solidified Evans’ reputation.
“That win really caught a lot of people’s attention,” Evans said. “No one had even considered it possible before that a truck could beat the buggies. Since then, guys like Ivan Stewart and Robby Gordon have done it, but 10 years ago it was really something different.”
Next for Evans is Saturday’s Mickey Thompson Gran Prix in the Coliseum where he and teammate Rob MacCachren, a casino parking lot attendant from Las Vegas, will drive Jeep Comanches in the Grand National sport truck class.
On Aug. 12 it will be back to the desert in his Dodge Ram for the Pahrump Station Nevada 500, a High Desert Racing Assn. race from Pahrump to Tonopah and back. Evans also fields a companion Dodge truck for Steve McEachern of Phoenix in desert races.
This year he is also campaigning two Jeeps in the desert. One, a Cherokee, has been driven by Evans’ son, Evan, 24, in the production passenger car class. The other, a Comanche, is driven by MacCachren in the 4-wheel-drive mini-pickup class.
Evan Evans won four races in a row and appeared about ready to move up to bigger and faster equipment, but he suffered a broken back in a motorcycle accident last Thursday night that may end his career.
He is paralyzed from the waist down.
The younger Evans was riding a dirt bike near his home when he hit a ditch in the darkness and crashed. He was taken to Riverside Community Hospital, where his condition is listed as critical.
“Evan has shown good aptitude for racing,” his father said the morning of the accident. “The way things are going, I figure he might be ready for the big truck about the time I retire.”
Saturday night, Walker said by phone from the hospital: “Obviously, this is a terrible setback for Evan. We hope for a better prognosis later, but there is no way to know what his future is right now. We are moving him to Loma Linda Hospital Monday for special treatment.
“We will have to get somebody in his (race) car to finish out the season because of our commitment to the sponsor. And he’ll be sorely missed in the shop, where he’s been one of our best workers, but we’re just keeping our fingers crossed that there will be some improvement. Right now, he has no feeling from his navel on down.”
Walker thought about retiring at the end of this season, but his recent successes and some pleading from the Chrysler management has extended his racing career at least through 1990.
“When I have a bad day I think about it (retiring) a lot, but when I have a good day I don’t think about it at all. On the other hand, I’ve won just about every race there is, so there are times that I wonder what am I doing pounding around out there with all those younger fellows.”
Evans’ portfolio of 78 major desert wins includes nine Baja 1000s, seven Parker 400s, six Baja 500s, eight Mint 400s, five Fireworks 250s and nine SCORE Riverside closed-course races.
“Right now, though, I want that win in the Coliseum so bad, both for my sponsor and for my own personal achievement. That would make three in a row, and I don’t think anyone has ever won more stadium races than that in a row.”
Roger Mears, in a Nissan, won three straight in 1985 and is the only one. Robby Gordon, Evans’ chief antagonist this season, finished first four consecutive times, but in the third race, in Seattle, he was disqualified for rough driving and Glenn Harris was declared the winner. “I know I can do it, but I’ll need a little bit of luck and some breaks,” Evans said.
Evans won his first race this year in the Astrodome and followed it with a win in the Rose Bowl, where he was bulldozed across the finish line by Gordon--a circumstance that found the Toyota team driver again disqualified.
“I hope Robby learned his lesson that he can’t do anything he wants and get away with it,” Evans said. “He is a fantastic driver, but he’s got a lot of growing up to do.”
Evans’ schedule includes 23 races, 10 in stadiums, nine in the desert and four at Don Brown’s Glen Helen Park facility in San Bernardino for closed-course events.
“Driving in the desert, and in a stadium, is almost like being in two different sports,” Evans said. “I enjoy them both, but they are very different.
“The desert truck is enormous. After sitting in the snug compartment of a stadium truck, you climb in the desert Dodge and it feels like you’re sitting in a huge room. When you start running, the power practically tears up the earth.
“It’s geared to run 130 m.p.h., but it’s scary when you go that fast because the steering wheel has no feeling and the truck is very unpredictable at those speeds.
“The tires swell up so that only about an inch and a half of tire is actually making contact with the ground. All you’re running on is the center of the crown of the tire. And you don’t stop real well at those speeds, either.
“The stadium Jeep, on the other hand, isn’t geared for more than 45 or 50 m.p.h., but it has fantastic acceleration. It will get from zero to 50 a heck of a lot quicker than the big truck and 45 is as fast as you’ll ever need because you’re always in a turn or going over a jump.
“On the desert you can pace yourself, but once the flag drops in the stadium you’d better put your foot to the floor and keep it there. There is no margin for error. You just stand on it.”
Which is one reason Evans’ associates call him Thunder Foot.
Evans points out that there is much more to fielding a racing team than drivers and vehicles.
“People see our two stadium Jeeps and our four desert vehicles and think that’s all there is, but that’s only what’s out front.
“We also built and maintain 10 chase vehicles for the desert and three prerunners for practice, plus we have two 18-wheelers for hauling our trucks to and from the races. There are times, when the crew is loading and unloading, that I think we’re a glorified Bekins (moving van company), carrying cars back and forth all the time.”
It also takes a lot of personnel to race in the desert. Evans must line up 27 additional workers for a race such as the Baja 1000.
“We have nine pit stops and need three men to a pit,” he said. “They’re all volunteers, guys who live around here and take an interest in what we’re doing. They take all the equipment needed for each stop with them and do all the tire changing and refueling and whatever else we need.”
If 23 races, running a busy racing shop and maintaining a family isn’t enough, Evans also flies his own Cessna 180 and recently purchased a helicopter.
“It’s not entirely a hobby. The plane gets me from Riverside to a race a whole lot faster than driving or taking a commercial plane, and it also gets me to Utah in a little more than two hours to enjoy our winter cabin. The chopper is great for flying low over a course to check out all the situations. You can see things from above that you don’t see on ground level.
“There’s no end to the details and the preparation needed to win off-road races today. The competition is just as intense as it is for an Indy car or a NASCAR race.”
Spoken just the way Roger Penske would have said it.
