Championship Off-Road Race Preview: ERX

Rounds 5 and 6 of the 2022 Championship Off-Road season see the midwest’s premier short course racers head to Elk River, Minnesota for the ERX Off-Road National at ERX Motor Park. Despite only hosting the sport for less than a decade, ERX has quickly established itself among some of the most popular off-road tracks in the country, producing a variety of winners and often shaking up the championship chase.

Last year’s event, in fact, produced seven different winners over 10 races across the five Pro classes. Only three drivers—Brock Heger, CJ Greaves, and local hero Andrew Carlson—took the top step of the podium twice on the weekend, and only Carlson managed to sweep a class (Pro Turbo SXS) among the group. As for Heger and Greaves, they split the victories in the Pro Stock SXS division, while taking a checkered flag apiece in their respective Pro Truck classes.

Greaves remains the Pro 4 driver to beat, holding an 18-point advantage over the still winless Kyle LeDuc, and is also second in Pro Stock SXS points and fifth in Pro Turbo in his first season in a Polaris RZR. Heger’s familiarity with his Yamaha, combined with a Greaves flat tire in the second race from Crandon last month, have given him a 38-point advantage coming into this weekend, but struggles of his own in Pro Lite have yielded that class lead to Kyle Greaves. The father-son duo of Rodney and Owen VanEperen currently lead the Pro Turbo division, but Kyle Chaney’s three-race winning streak has him up to third after a DNF in the opening race from Antigo.

Pro 2, however, remains anyone’s race. Jerett Brooks and Cory Winner are separated by just a single point coming into ERX, with Ricky Gutierrez just six points behind Winner in third and two-time 2022 winner and Thursday’s top qualifier Mickey Thomas in fourth. But the top half of the field are all still within a race’s worth of one another in the points, going back to defending class champion Keegan Kincaid at 43 points back in eighth. For reference, Kincaid overcame a deficit of about half that size in last year’s Crandon finale to score the title; with six additional races to work with to do it from here, the closest Pro 2 battles of the season may still be yet to come.

Opening ceremonies for both days of the ERX Off-Road National kick off at 10:30AM CT, with a full slate of sportsman classes to follow and Pro racing kicking off shortly after 5PM. Pro drivers will also be available for autographs on Sunday starting at 1:30PM. The action will stream live on FloRacing as always, with TV coverage coming to the CBS Sports Network in the coming months. Following ERX, the 2022 Championship Off-Road season will return to Dirt City Motorplex in Lena, Wisconsin on July 30-31.

Images via Championship Off-Road