With the W.E.ROCK series winding up, Maxxis drivers have again powered their way to the top of the rankings. Troy Bailey has captured the series’ West Coast title, while Ken Blume has locked up the East Coast honors. Both drivers will meet at W.E.ROCK’s national competition in October.
According to Bailey, riding Trepadors means that he never has to worry about his tires. “The Trepador bias ply you can rely on. It’s one part of the system that you don’t have to think about,” he told Maxxis. “I don’t bring a spare tire to a competition. Even with that much at stake, I don’t. I know the race support guy gets mad at me. He says that things can always happen, and I say ‘Not with Maxxis.’ They’re that dependable. I’ve got complete confidence in the tire, and tires are a major part of it.”
“I put my bet on Maxxis,” he continued. “They’re the most durable tire on the market. I would definitely put my reputation on the line for that, 100%. We beat the heck out of [the tires]. I’ve been competing with Maxxis for, I think, seven years, and with all that, I’ve never popped a Maxxis tire.”
While Bailey’s confidence in his Trepadors couldn’t be greater, he’s faced challenges with other aspects of his vehicle this season, which makes his triumph even sweeter – and his determination to win at the nationals that much greater: “We’ve actually had a string of breakdowns. We’ve broken more this year, and so we’re definitely not letting our guard down. We want the national title really bad. There for a while at the last event, I was not positive that I was going to get [the West Coast title], and we ended up triumphing in the end. I expected one of my easiest years, and it ended up being one of my most difficult.”
Fellow Maxxis driver Blume faces one more division contest, but because he’s already nailed down the title, he can afford to relax a little – at least, as much as one can when defying the laws of physics in a rock crawling competition. “It’s awesome [to have the title locked down], especially seeing as there’s one race left, and we can just have fun,” he told Maxxis. “You always want to win and do good, but it’s nice knowing that you don’t have to.”
Blume is excited about the national contest: “I think its going to be great. It’s manmade, and the car works really well on a manmade course. We ought to be top five easy.” Also in his 11th year in the sport, Blume says that his interest in rock crawling evolved out of his love of trail riding. He started his career by competing in contests that were a hybrid of rock crawling and XRRA-speed style racing. Today, he says that getting paid to have fun and make lots of friends is the best perk of his career – and he also appreciates having tires he can rely on no matter what: “The tires just perform flawlessly without reliability issues. I finished on the same set of tires I started on, and very few people can say that.”
Maxxis is proud to sponsor both of these fine drivers, and wishes them the best at W.E.ROCK’s national competition