SCORE Journal

score-journal-JAN-2020

SCORE Journal - The Official Publication of SCORE Off-Road Racing

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2019 Pro UTV FI Champion Wayne Matlock The two-time Pro UTV FI champion continues to dominate in one of the most competitive classes By Dan Sanchez Photos by Get Some Photo Among the champions of champions, Wayne Matlock has proven to be one of the top racers in the SCORE World Desert Championship. In 2018 he not only won the Pro UTV FI championship but also garnered enough points to be the Overall Champion of the series. This year, Matlock had it a little bit tougher with an extremely high level of competition from racers such as Marc Burnett, Brandon Schueler, Craig Scanlon, Justin Lambert, the Murray brothers and more, totaling 92 competitors in the class during the 2019 season. With UTVs in the field ranging from Polaris, Can-Am, Yamaha, and Speed UTV, these race vehicles are getting faster and are utilizing more sophisticated suspension systems and more durable components that have improved the finishing rate for UTVs over the past three years. Nevertheless, Wayne Matlock is the guy who can start a race at the back of a pack of 30 competitors and work his way to the front and win. “Our focus this year with Polaris, was to win the championship,” said Matlock. “There’s a lot of development that has gone into these vehicles, including the four-wheel-drive systems and the Fox dynamic suspensions, so we’ve been evolving with Polaris to build a better machine. While we’re still learning the limits of the vehicle, the engineers are also learning what we do, so we feel there’s still more performance to come.” “It’s always an honor to win another championship and although we would have liked to win more of the races this year, we’ve been consistently in the top five and squeaked by with enough points to win it again,” said Matlock. This year’s competition had Matlock and 2015 Pro UTV FI Champion Marc Burnett battle it out in every race to the point where Matlock won the class championship by only four points ahead of Burnett. “The competition is getting tougher,” he said. “You combine that with veteran UTV racers and even some coming over from other classes and it’s going to be even harder to win races in the 2020 season. While we’re still working with Polaris as a factory sponsor, we’re not finished pushing the speed and capabilities of our vehicles so we’ll see how it plays out.

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