The last time Dylan Parsons sat down with The Checkered Flag, he was preparing for his rookie season in Championship Off-Road‘s Pro SPEC class. A year and a half later, when TCF caught up with Parsons on Friday, he was the newly crowned champion of the category.
TCF and Parsons recapped his 2024 season, discussed the growth of the Pro SPEC class and what makes it one of the most popular divisions in short course today, and even chatted a bit about snocross and what’s to come in 2025.
A transcript of the interview can be found here.
The 2024 Season
Parsons finished fourth in the 2023 Pro SPEC standings. It took some time to get used to his new confines after moving up from 1600 Single Buggy, but he found some steam in the closing stretch with three podiums: a pair of thirds in both races at Bark River International Raceway and a second in the season finale at MidAmerica Outdoors.
“Towards the end of the year, we started podiuming in ’23 and then got Rookie of the Year. We were just building up momentum and just not trying to wreck the truck,” he began. “Beginning of the season, I came in, I tested twice before the season and I’m like, ‘We were ready coming into the first race to run with those guys,’ and we won the first race of the year. We were ready to go.”
The strong ending to his first year proved so encouraging that he picked up full-season sponsorship from Toys For Trucks. A pickup aftermarket accessories seller, the company first appeared on Parsons’ #99 truck at the 2023 Crandon World Cup weekend before stepping up for the entire 2024 campaign. TJ Larson and Bill Ciuplinski, respectively the President and Vice President of Retail, also attended races.
Parsons described the sponsorship activation as “super cool. We’re kind of local and we see Toys for Trucks, they have a couple stores right by us, but most people don’t realise that they have like thirty stores across the country. They bought a couple 4 Wheel Parts and they’re kind of the same thing as a 4 Wheel Parts. Some of their numbers on sales, I never would have even realised that they sell so much of Bilstein and CURT Hitches and things like that. They’re a huge supplier for a lot of those products.”
The 2024 campaign kicked off with the Mayhem at the Motorplex, the first of two rounds at Dirt City Motorplex. The track was the site of Parsons’ first Pro SPEC podium last year when he finished third, and one that he is more than familiar with. He took the lead on the opening lap of the first race and never looked back en route to his maiden truck win, then capped off the weekend with a second in Race #2.
“I got hundreds and hundreds of laps on Lena. It’s the closest track to us and to go test there, we tested there multiple times,” Parsons explained. “Going there and winning, it’s not my favourite track of them all, but we had competitive lap times and we showed up and knew we were ready to go. Winning the first race, it kind of didn’t set in all weekend. We went first and second over the weekend and we were like, ‘Okay, we know we can run with these guys. We knew we can run with them last year. We just have to execute and be there when we have to be.’”
The Antigo Off-Road National at Antigo Lions Roaring Raceway ended up being his worst outing of the season, though it still had its moments. He was able to notch a third on the first day before a flat tyre dropped him to fifth, which he pointed out was due to contact rather than a tyre failure.
A second at the Forest County Potawatomi Brush Run got him back on track before being mired in drama with fellow…
