Following A Dream – ATV Racing
By Dan Nitzel, President and co-founder of the Nebraska Off Highway Vehicle Assn.
Dereck Djernes drag racing Mark Horst’s highly modified DS650 in Alabama for Team High Caliber
The following is an interview with Mark Horst. Mark is an avid ATV drag racer.
How did you get started in drag racing ATVs? – My wife Mandy took a job at the Genoa Hospital, which brought us to Genoa. One Sunday afternoon in 2003, I was sitting in the living room watching TV, and noticed trailer after trailer of ATVs going by, and was extremely curious. So I got in my pickup and followed them out to Headworks. Being new to the area, I had never heard of the place, and didn’t know it existed. I immediately became very interested in getting an ATV. Shortly after that was a jamboree, which I attended with a borrowed ATV. I made my way out to the river bed where everyone races. I witnessed hundreds of ATV's drag racing, and I was hooked....then and there.
We then started to save money so I could get my own quad. Of course, I was looking at the faster quads, with racing in mind. One of the first quads that caught my eye, was the DS650, but at the time I didn’t know where to find one to check out. I ended up buying a Polaris Predator. It didn’t take long and I was buying paddles, and having the Predator motor beefed up. I ended up getting that Predator to be among the faster 4-strokes out there, BUT there were always a couple DS650 that I just couldn’t beat. After trying and trying, and spending more and more money on my Predator, I finally decided to get a DS650 of my own. That bike is now the one we compete with, and since then I have totally fell in love with the DS, and have even bought another one.
Where do you like to race and what is the furthest distance you have ever driven to race? - My favorite track is Outlaw Sand Drags, in Town Creek Alabama, which is 900 miles one way, and the farthest we've ever drove. We've been there 4 times. With a 28ft enclosed trailer, it takes us about 17 hours, which is NOT one of the perks, but it’s worth it! They have an event every spring that is called The Outlaw Shootout. It’s the biggest 4-stroke NATIONAL race of the year – the Super Bowl, or World Series of what we do. For those who don’t know, or have not ever witnessed a National Event, it’s a big deal. Several 40+ foot race trailers, huge stacker trailers, even big 18 wheelers, all loaded with race bikes like ours. Basically trailers upon trailers with full shops on wheels. The first time we went, we pulled in with my older 1/2 ton pickup loaded to gills with tools, tires, fuel cans, etc., and my flat bed trailer with the bike on it. It just so happened, that we got parked in between two stacker trailers. I looked over at Dereck Djernes and said, "Holy Crap, I feel like the Beverly Hill Billies". Since then I was able to come up with a enclosed trailer, and a little bigger pick up to pull it, but we are still one of the smaller rigs there.
Since that first race, we formed High Caliber Racing. Our team consists of myself, Mandy, Dereck Djernes, and Ben Kaiser. All Nebraska people, and all NOHVA Members. We have a world class 4- stroke drag quad that we travel the nation with. We have won many first place trophies, at many national events. We are also a three time and current World Record holder for the Four Stroke OEM Unlimited Class.
My other favorite track is right here in Nebraska, The Off Road Ranch. Why...because its home!!! The facility is great, the track is great, and Kevin (the owner) and staff have been good to us. We have spent lots of hours there Test-n-Tuning, and getting our bike dialed in. They also have a National Event every year called Sandblast.
This will be our 4th year racing at this level. This year we plan to make a few other races, if budget and break-downs allow. We're planning a Planetsand.com event in Missouri, and a big race in Kentucky called the Bluegrass Nationals, as well as Outlaw and Sandblast.
Can you give us a bit more information about your drag ATV? - You can’t do something like this, without an extreme love for the bike. A little bit of a father-son, brother-brother, best friend type of love, all rolled into one. For us, it’s all about the bike. The bike started out as a 2003 Bombardier DS 650. It has shed its skin several times and evolved into what it is today, which is a Full Drag DS 855. I believe that what has made us so successful is that we learned and grew as the bike did. It started out as a bone stock machine. With the help of some great friends around here, we did the things necessary to make it faster and faster. Over the years, I had used different builders and their parts to create a pretty darn fast bike - especially on a local level. When I made the decision to try our hand on a more national level, it became painfully obvious that what we had wasn’t anywhere near good enough. At that point, I decided to go against any advice I had received and call Eric Oldham, aka “Mr. Horsepower” at OMW Racing. As it turns out, the advice I had received (from others) was extremely false, and I quickly developed a good business relationship with him. Since then, we have become very good friends. I decided to pull the trigger and give Eric the green light on building me the best motors (at the time) he could, and BOY did he! He took my 650cc motor and turned into a fire breathing, ground thumping, 855cc power house. It went from 40 horse power and 30 ft-lbs of torque, to over 90 horse power and over 60 ft-lbs of torque. This bike was built for the Unlimited classes, which means nitrous, nitrous, and more nitrous. On the dynamometer with a 30 horsepower shot of nitrous, this motor will yield over 120 horsepower. All of that was barely good enough to actually win the Outlaw event, the second time we went.
As my racing had evolved, it became obvious that in order to stay on the cutting edge, or at least near it, we had to get weight off of the bike. In this sport, there are motor builders, and chassis builders. I already had the best motor builder, and to tackle this weight shaving mission, I needed to find the best chassis builder. Enter Andy Morris of AM Custom Chassis. Andy spent countless hours building everything he possibly could out of chromoly and titanium to replace the heavy OEM chassis parts. Parts such as A-arms, swing arm, sub frame, steering stem, oil tank, and wheelie bar, as well as a lot more.
Now we have one of the most powerful, and one of the lightest drag bikes out there. In the last 2 years, we have won the National OEM Unlimited class at the Outlaw Sand drag two times (between the spring and fall events), a 2nd place in the National Drag Frame Unlimited class at Outlaw sand drags, and a 1st place in the National Super Twin Unlimited class at Outlaw Sand drags. The Super Twin class is a class that we bumped up to and is a twin cylinder Unlimited 2stroke class. Unlimited means power adders such as nitrous and turbo are allowed. We've also recorded one 1st place win in the OEM unlimited at the Sandblast races here in Nebraska, a 2nd place in the OEM Limited class (which means all motor, with no power adders), and a 1st place in the Twin Open Unlimited.
We have also been fortunate enough to break and set the OEM Unlimited Single Cylinder World Record three times, and we are the current record holders in that class with a 3.711 at 84 mph. We are only a few hundredths off of the over all Single Cylinder record of 3.704.
Other notables worth mention for this build are Chris Blackwell, Taylor Dribben, and Sandtoyz Unlimited. Our major sponsor is AM Custom Chassis.
Tell me about your team, High Caliber - When we went National, we realized we needed a name. It took forever to come up with something that fit. Finally Mandy and I decided on High Caliber. High Caliber is a name from my past that holds a great deal of sentimental value to me. After some thought about using the High Caliber name, I was worried that we would fail and desecrate the name. After coming up with several generic names that just didn’t fit, Mandy finally said to me, “why do you just call it High Caliber, and be done with it”. So I did.
After the bike had evolved into being close to Full Drag, it became painfully obvious that a guy my size can’t do this bike justice while racing against people that were less than half my size. One day when I was out at Headworks, I was watching this little snot nosed twerp teenager out there kicking everyone else on a bike that probably shouldn’t have been that fast, using only rider racing skill. Thing is, he didn’t even know how good he was. I’m talking about Dereck Djernes. Since I am so passionate about my bike I wasn’t going to just put anyone on it. A person’s character is the most important thing to me. The person who represents the bike, the team, and more importantly, himself, was going to be the one riding my bike! That is Dereck Djernes!
Even though I didn’t know Dereck very well, I could tell he was a pretty good kid. I knew he was the one that I had to get on this bike. Keep in mind this is long before we went national. My goals at that time were to winning the Jamboree and Westfair. I struck up a conversation with Dereck and told him how I would like him to give my bike a try. He was very apprehensive at first as he had never been on a bike that fast at his young age. Eventually he decided to ride the bike and made a pretty hard pass down the river bed. He came back and was grinning ear to ear. At that very second, my bike had its jockey!
Dereck and I made the first trip to Alabama, just me and him. Without knowing what to expect, we were in WAY over our heads. We worked and worked until we absolutely didn’t have anything left, only to have lost! We went home with our heads hung low and our tails tucked, but we both decided that we ain’t done and this ain’t over! We decided that we can do this and we were going to need more help.
Enter Ben Kaiser. Ben is a friend of Derecks (and now mine), and Dereck suggested we bring him aboard. After meeting with Ben, and finding out his credentials, I was all for it. Ben is a graduate of the big Nascar School, in North Carolina, and spent a couple years on one of the NASCAR Teams. Needless to say he knows his way around a tool box. He knows things, and comes up with things that apply to what we do that I had no idea about. Things like wind resistance and arrow dynamics. In the middle of a race it becomes very hectic and you get only a few minutes in between passes to make changes or fix something that broke. With bikes like ours, they can only run long enough to drive it from the staging lanes to the starting line, and then make the pass. After Dereck crosses the finish line, he shuts the bike off, and someone needs pull him back. That’s also part of what Ben does.
The first year we raced, I had to go get the time slip, drive out to Dereck, hook up to the bike, pull the bike back, go over the time slip, make the changes needed, and get the bike back to the staging lanes in time to make the next pass. It was just too much for two guys. Now, Ben will get Dereck and the bike while I get the time slip and go over it. Meanwhile Ben and Dereck get the bike into the trailer, get cooling fans on it, and hook it up to the battery charger. After I decide on what changes need to be made, Ben, Dereck, and I make the changes needed, and get the bike back to the staging lanes. It works GREAT! I can’t tell you how much it means to be surrounded by two guys I can totally trust, and give everything of themselves to make this bike win. They are the highest quality, most respectful people you can ask for.
The last piece, and most important piece of this puzzle we call High Caliber is my amazing wife Mandy. She is the glue that holds this whole thing together. She not only supports me in doing this, she pushes me. There has been several times when I was trying to talk myself out of doing something needed to make the bike faster because it was too expensive, and she would tell me to “do it”, “we can afford it”, “we come too far to start slacking NOW”. What can you say about a wife like that? Ben and Dereck have the utmost of respect for her, and Dereck and her have become best friends, which I support 100%.
Come race time, Mandy is in charge of videoing each pass. We’ve found that being able to go back to the trailer and watch each pass in slow motion, backwards, ect. is a HUGE asset. She also videos the rest of the extended team, TEAM OMW, so they can watch their passes too. OMW Racing is Eric Oldhams business, and there are a couple teams like ours that race under the OMW flag. We call it TEAM OMW, and the Captain is Eric Oldham.
Mandy is also our team mom when we are on the road. She takes care of EVERYTHING. She cooks, she makes sure we stay hydrated, she cleans up after us, she is the last to go to bed and the first to wake up. Because she is a PA at the Hospital in Grand Island, she takes care of us and anybody else if they get hurt. Like I said, “most important piece of the puzzle”!