ROB MACCACHREN

#21 Rockstar Energy/Makita Tools Ford

Red Bull Frozen Rush

January 9, 2014

MacCachren brings three decades of off-road experience to Frozen Rush and has adapted quickly to the format. He posted the second fastest practice time on Wednesday before earning the pole in Thursday’s event.

You had a decent practice run yesterday, towards the top of the charts, and you qualified first today. What’s the key to really going fast on this course?

Well, this is new to me. I’m a desert guy coming from southern California and Las Vegas. I grew up in the desert, with motorcycles and off roading and this is my first time on snow. Really, I’m taking it as I see it, and so far it’s gone well for us. I can tell you a big thing that’s helped is—I’m amazed by the BFGoodrich tires and the spikes that are in there and I think they give us really a lot of grip which helps. Running here on the snow is not a whole lot different than what I’m used to,—the grip level is good, I feel like I’m in control and that helps a lot.

When we committed to come here and run the Frozen Rush, we put our heads together, me and the team, and started trying to think of what we needed to do for set up to come here. Over the last month we made changes, did a lot of that stuff and, I feel, came here pretty prepared. And we’ve been making changes every time we’re off the track—I’m learning the driving style better and better, and the guys are adjusting the truck, and it’s helping us. It’s the same for everyone, everyone’s doing the same thing. I just hope that we’re quicker than they all are to make my truck fast and so far it’s worked for us.

We’ve got the head-to-head format which is a little bit different than you’ll see in a normal short course race. What about the head-to-head format, and especially about separating the drivers, is really going to make this a good event for the fans and a fun event for you guys out there?

Absolutely, we’ve been here for three or four days, just visiting through the town of Newry and all the Sunday River restaurants and things like that here, and the people are excited—they’re really happy to have us here and I couldn’t thank the Red Bull people enough for putting this thing on and giving us the opportunity to do it. It’s incredible. I know it’s the first time, it’s learning, but everyone around here has been so good at helping us and put on a fine event.

All eight of you guys have never all competed in the same event, at the same time together, but I’m sure you’ve competed against a lot of these guys in different forms of racing, whether it be in the Baja or whether it be in short course. When you look at the competition, what do you think are the keys to just making sure that you’re ahead of some of these guys?

We have the best of the best here in the Pro 4 field: Johnny Greaves, Ricky Johnson, Carl Renezeder, myself—we run against each other quite often. I race in both the Lucas Oil short course Series and the TORC Series, so one way or another I raced against every single one of these guys in here all the time—so that might be something that will help me, as I know their idiosyncrasies and their thinking and their driving style. It’s good, we all always want to race each other and this has given us the opportunity for the top guns in all the series to come together in one place and go after it. I think it’s going to be a great battle out there. I’m happy they separated us from the start because the guy who wins the race is going to know he won it and the guy who loses is going to know he lost it.

I’m happy with the format we’re going to do, bracket style and racing against the clock—the fans will love it. The speeds we have coming down the hill, on our data we’re doing 95 miles an hour when we come over the gap jump. Then we’re coming into the slowest part of the course, so you get on the brakes really hard and there’s a big, banked wall there that you definitely don’t want to get into cause it’s square. It’s incredible, it’s no joke—I didn’t know how this would be. Typically what I’m used to driving in the snow, I’m going 5 miles an hour trying to not get stuck and half the time I do, so I was really wondering if this is going to work and it is. It is real, it’s incredible, and it is racing.