Speed and tradition make Crandon the short course off road pinnacle for Kincaid

Crandon International Raceway may not be as technical as some of the tracks on Championship Off Road's schedule. It may not have the big jumps or as many turns as some of the circuits in short course off road. But it has speed, and it has history.

Keegan Kincaid is keenly aware of both. Growing up a few miles from the track in Crandon, having watched his father Jeff win numerous races there, and winning nearly two dozen himself in Pro2 alone, he knows what the track has to offer. And he has conquered it on numerous occasions, most recently at the Potawatomi Brush Run in June, where he swept both of the Pro2 races and the Pro2 vs. Pro4 Cup race in a rather wild finish.

“Crandon is about consistency,” Kincaid explains. “The track is really wide. It's the longest track that we race on, and it's the fastest – we're hitting over 100 miles an hour. The major key at Crandon is the land-rush start. If you can get that holeshot and get out front early, that's a huge advantage for you. So it's really about consistency and driving smooth and hitting your marks. And Crandon develops a really good cushion and that is typically the fast line. When you get off of that, you end up usually going backwards.”

One of the challenges at Crandon is the competitors don't get a full reconnaissance lap, so they don't get to see how much water has been laid down, where the ruts in the dirt are, how the track has been prepped. So the competitors don't get a good look at the very fast Turn 1 until after they start in one long line trying to be the first to the apex. Kincaid says once you make it through there, there's a big weight off a driver's shoulders. But the next 10 laps aren't going to be easy.

“The West Coast, they had a lot of what we call bullrings – short, tight, technical racetracks, big jumps, a lot of timing. And when you get to Crandon, a lot of these guys enjoyed coming here because it's a whole different aspect," he says. "It's fast, but it's also really easy to make mistakes on and so it's about hitting marks being consistent. I think that's the hardest adjustment is finding the edge and being able to push that edge to be fast.”

Even when there were competing short course off road racing series, that largely separated West Coast and the Midwest, Labor Day meant a pilgrimage to Crandon for everyone. For Kincaid, though, Crandon is home. Sure, it's the spiritual home of short course; but Kincaid was raised there. Both his parents grew up there as well, and he spent his teenage years in the halls of Crandon High School. So winning there has special meaning.

“Besides Labor Day weekend and the Forest County Potawatomi Brush Run, I'm just Keegan, and that's what makes it special for me. All my friends my family are from here, and so to be able to race in front of that hometown crowd and be a part of history at Crandon is important for me and my family, and I'm proud to be from Crandon. One of the things that stands out to me is seeing it when it's not at its pinnacle of Labor Day weekend and, all sudden, a town of 1800 people turns to 50,000 people. So it's special, not only for me, but for the community, for Crandon and Forest County. It's something that unites everybody, and I'm excited to be a part of it.”

At this weekend's Polaris Crandon World Championships, Kincaid hopes to repeat his success from June. He'd like to take his seventh Cup win, where Pro2 and Pro4 battle it out after a staggered start … although perhaps with a little less drama than he experienced in June. Last time out, the finish was so wild he had to go watch a replay to figure out what happened. With CJ Greaves in a Pro4 bearing down on him and trying to pass for the win, the two trucks got tangled and locked together. Separating about the time that third-place Kyle Chaney caught up. It was three trucks at the finish, with Chaney ending up on top of Kincaid just past the line certainly one of the more bizarre finishes in Cup race history.

“I knew as we're getting closer, it's going to come down to that last lap and going into the Gravel Pit me and CJ. You know, CJ slid in … nothing intentional, and we just kind of touched and got together, and it locked us. We were sitting there long enough, I think me and CJ had a conversation together trying to figure out how to get out of this.

“So we got out and it was three wide going to the finish line. I actually thought it was CJ that got into me. I thought it broke the rear end out of the truck at that time, I didn't know I had another vehicle on top of me until the safety crew came up. I was kind of shocked and like, I don't know what just happened. I didn't know if I won at that time, and I was just making sure [Chaney] was OK,” Kincaid recounts.

Will this weekend's races produce anything similar? Possibly. But if one thing is certain, there will be many exciting races during the Labor Day weekend at Crandon International Raceway, and you can watch it unfold on RACER Network and the RACER+ App. Check out the RACER TV page for the full schedule.