Off Road

2022 Great American Shortcourse schedule released

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Credit: Christopher Polvoorde

Great American Shortcourse‘s sophomore season will see an expanded schedule from 2021. After hosting eight race days across four weekends during the inaugural year, 2022 will have ten days of action in five total rounds, as well as the début of a special non-points race.

Before the season begins, the Off Road Race of Champions will take place on 1 February in Johnson Valley, California. Johnson Valley’s Means Dry Lake is the site of King of the Hammers, an annual and extremely grueling rock-crawling event organised by GAS co-operator Dave Cole‘s Hammerking Productions, and the lakebed is transformed into a temporary village called Hammertown during KOTH. The Race of Champions was announced in March as part of a collaboration with the Stadium Super Trucks in which certain 2021 GAS class champions would race against each other in stadium trucks, with the winner earning a full-time ride for the 2022 SST season.

It is not currently known if the partnership with SST is still in place as plans to host a joint championship weekend together at Lake Elsinore Diamond or Glen Helen Raceway in November fell through. Assuming SST’s involvement continues and the details outlined in the initial announcement remain the same, six classes will take part: Pro 2 (won by Dave Mason Jr.), Pro Lite (Christopher Polvoorde), Pro Buggy (Trey Gibbs), Production 1000 UTV (Dallas Nord), Production Turbo UTV (Chance Haugen), and Mod Kart (Connor Barry). Polvoorde is the only driver of the six with SST experience, having scored a podium at Road America in 2019.

The season will kick off at a new site as GAS leaves California for the first time: Wild Horse Pass Motorsports Park in Chandler, Arizona, on 19/20 March. Wild Horse has hosted a variety of disciplines including GAS’ spiritual predecessor Lucas Oil Off Road Racing Series. Nitro Rallycross, also a series formed in 2021, raced at Wild Horse in mid-November. Wild West Motorsports Park in Nevada would have been the first non-California track for GAS had it not shut down in April, six months before GAS was scheduled to go there.

The remaining four rounds will take place at the same locations as last year. Glen Helen Raceway in San Bernardino, host of the second and fourth weekends in 2021, will do so again on 14/15 May and 1/2 October. Many off-road series including LOORRS, NRX, and SST have raced at the San Bernardino track.

Victorville’s San Bernardino Fairgrounds (also known as SBC Fairgrounds) marks the halfway point and season finale on 9/10 July and 12/13 November, respectively. The Fairgrounds held the inaugural GAS weekend in April.

Wild Horse Pass and Glen Helen were previous stops on the LOORRS schedule, while the SBC Fairgrounds was a venue for the Lucas Oil Regional Off Road Racing Series. Both leagues folded in 2020, and the Regional Series’ race director Lee Perfect would go on to co-found GAS with Cole.

2022 schedule

WeekendTrackLocationDate
Ex.Hammertown (King of the Hammers)Johnson Valley, CA1 February
1Wild Horse Pass Motorsports ParkChandler, AZ19/20 March
2Glen Helen RacewaySan Bernardino, CA14/15 May
3San Bernardino FairgroundsVictorville, CA9/10 July
4Glen Helen RacewaySan Bernardino, CA1/2 October
5San Bernardino FairgroundsVictorville, CA12/13 November
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Justin is not an off-road racer, but he writes about it for The Checkered Flag.
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