UTVs keep growing in popularity each
year, and this year at DuneFest there was a great
showing of the two- and four-seat machines navigating
around the dunes.
In the evenings, Can-Am and Quake LED hosted guided night rides for ATVs and
UTVs through the sand forests leading into the dark of night.
If you weren’t out shredding sand dunes, you could walk around vendor row to
check out all the best products for ATVs and UTVs, like Elka Suspension.
challenging motocross track. Trophy
classes ranged from kids 12-and-un-
der 90–150cc to Open 200–300cc and
400-450cc MX competition, which
included men’s and women’s Opens,
Amateur Grand Prix and Expert
Ironman races. Saturday’s MX races
were all about SxS competition, with
a Last-Man Standing open race, two
UTV motocross heats, a barrel race
and a timed obstacle-course race.
As a sand drag racer, the Oregon
Off-road Racing Association (OORA)
professionally installed and groomed
300-foot sand drag track is my
DuneFest stoke and one of the most
popular DuneFest events. Open to
ATV, UTV and sand car/truck riders of
any level of expertise, the OORA track
uses an NHRA drag-race starting tree,
timing lights and computer program,
showing racers’ reaction times at the
launch lights, 60-foot times, overall
speed and elapsed times. Riders who
don’t want to enter the race watch
the exciting speedfest parked on
their ATVs and UTVs along the track
behind protective fencing.
The track opened Wednesday night
with a tightly competitive Heads-Up
Index race with huge night lights illuminating the track. Index classes were
established based on elapsed times
during two trial runs. On Thursday
an all-day test and tune allowed any
rider to make as many passes down
the track as they wanted, just having
fun launching at the tree and jamming
through the gears to see what elapsed
times their ATV or UTV could run.
Friday and Saturday were full days
of bracket racing on the track, including a Sport Light ATV race; kids’ race;
UTV race; cars, jeeps, buggies and
dragsters race; thumper wars (
four-stroke ATVs only), Banshee bash
(two-stroke ATVs only); a Pro Light
UTV race; and Pro Light ATV race.
Trophies were awarded to first and
second place, and a $500 purse was
split $350/$150 by first and second
place in the Pro Light racing action.
First- and second-place finishers
from all the drag races were automatically entered in the final DuneFest
race to battle for the 5-foot trophy and
the 2016 King of the Dunes title. This
year’s king is Darren Bergnach from
Gibsons, British Columbia, Canada,
who raced his Redline Racing-built
Banshee to the title.
MORE TO DO
Vendors’ row was the perfect place
to cruise and relax. A row of food
DUNEFEST