David Ashley has been engaged in off-road motorsports for 43 years. He has successfully raced motorcycles, buggies, off-road trucks, and stadium vehicles. His career
started as a young man, when he won a gold medal for the United States (and his
Yamaha sponsor), in the Six Day Trials in Austria. At age 18, Dave was involved in a
tragic head-on collision that ended in a fatality. This accident inspired Dave to vow
to make off-road racing a safer sport. In his pursuit of safety, he chaired the drivers’
safety meetings for many of his races, as well as worked with race promoters to avoid
hidden hazards. He also worked with many less experienced drivers, sharing techniques to avoid problems. Dave took his passion for safety to vehicle manufacturers
and, for the last 22 years, he has worked with the transmission, safety, engine, chassis
development, motorsports and special vehicle teams (SVT) of Ford Motor Company,
as a consultant in their testing, research, and development efforts. Dave’s current
assignments include: test driving for the Safety Rollover Airbag Sensor team, building
the Raptor Race Vehicle for international competition, and working for Roush, as the
manager for Ford Off-Road Track Safety.
Marty Fiolka’ s involvement in off-road motorsports demonstrates a broad reach
with his ability to intermix public relations, marketing, journalism, broadcasting
and other expertise into one effective representation for the off-road industry.
Marty is well known for his ability to perform extensive research, publishing his
first book “1000 Miles to Glory”, and writing countless articles for Dirt Sports magazine. He was also the Associate Producer for the movie Dust to Glory and now
Executive Producer for the Baja Social Club. He has been instrumental in preserving the history of the sport, in many areas like organizing a parade of historic race
vehicles from Tijuana to Ensenada as part of the 40th Anniversary of the Baja 1000;
helping to re-launch the legendary Meyers Manx, and supporting Mr. Meyers to
race his final race in 2014; and growing the new NORRA vintage rally movement.
Marty continues to build an off-road motorsports legacy, with a number of ongoing projects that will further document and celebrate the sport.
Nye Frank’s successful career as a designer and car builder proved that he had a
unique and comprehensive understanding of performance-from conception to
completion- of not only vehicle development, but also the planning and strategy
needed to win races. His work with shock absorbers in the 80’s was far ahead of its
time. He is best known for his innovative use of air shocks with the Mazda program
in MTEG (Mickey Thompson Entertainment Group) and later with Rob MacCachren
in SODA and CORR. Many of the concepts Nye created have now been adopted
by the industry, such as his approach to suspension tuning and the relationship
between springs and shocks to form a complete suspension. He also designed and
built a Pro4 truck for MacCachren with an unheard of and unconventional four corner air-shock system; the team was so dominating that CORR outlawed the suspension, after MacCachren’ s team captured three consecutive Borg Warner trophies
and several ͕