A quick glance at Casey Currie’s twitter feed left us, well, envious. Jeeping Moab, racing Baja, navigating the Rubicon Trail, and hurtling through Saudi Arabia are just a few examples of how he spends his time. Currie seems to always be off in some exotic off-road mecca, white-knuckling colossal amounts of horsepower. Now, he’s leaving Can-Am, where he led the brand to a Dakar victory, for Polaris.
Very few off-road racers manage to turn their passion into a rewarding career, but it did not come easy for Casey. He was born into a family that already had a deep racing heritage, but there was a point where he almost called it quits. “Me and my dad had made the decision that we were going to go do one more race and that was it, we’re done,” Currie said. “It didn’t seem that my off-road racing career was going to sustain itself. We drove to a race in Texas. My truck was all black and I had no sponsors and that was it. That was going to be the last event. We ended up winning. One of the owners of Monster was watching the race on TV and made some calls. They reached out and said they would like to be partners, and that was the beginning right there.” Since that time, Currie has racked up wins in practically every form of off-road racing, including the Dakar Rally, Baja 1000, Baja 500, X Games, and the Mint 400, along with championships in Short Course off-road racing.
Currie took Can-Am to its first Dakar Rally win in 2020; in fact, it was the first win ever for any American team. So why jump ship to Polaris? "I am excited for the opportunity to join Team Polaris. My involvement at Currie Enterprises and the brands working together on a business front, as well as the opportunity to head back to Dakar and get support at a factory race team level are both big reasons for the change. The products and the innovation coming from Polaris are top-notch and the future is bright," Currie said. "We have many projects coming this year with Team RZR. We will be heading to the [King of the] Hammers to race and hitting the road to find some epic spots to ride."
King of the Hammers begins January 28 and runs through February 6. We look forward to a full report from Casey and the rest of Team RZR.