Evan Walker Evans(born February 11, 1965) is an Off-Road Racer who competes in the highly competitive form of off-road racing known as Short Course Off-Road Racing. He has successfully competed in other forms of off-road racing such as long distance desert races and even the Pikes Peak Hill Climb.
He was no doubt influenced by his very famous father,”The Legend”, off-road racer Walker Evans. However, Evan has carved his own niche in the history of off-road racing. He started his short course career in the now defunct Mickey Thompson Stadium Series. In 1996, Evan took a class 13 Chevrolet full size truck, that he purchased from his dad, to the Midwestern SODA short course series. Evan dominated the series with seven Sportsman class victories plus a second-place finish to win the class 13 Championship title.
That 1996 season put his name in the record books as the most victorious truck class driver in SODA history, and netted him honors of being elected to the 1996 Auto Racing All-American Team, and being named the 1996 SODA “Driver of the Year.” I997 saw Evan taking over right where he left off in 1996, and finished the season in second place in Class 13 points, with five victories out of eight races.
In 1998 the SODA series was replaced by CORR, and over the next 7 seasons in the Midwest Evan would go on to win 23 more races with CORR along with 51 top fives, and finish in the top six or better in points every season. Four of those seasons he finished 2nd in the points, and one other season he finished 3rd. All this in the highly competitive and elite Professional Pro-2 truck class. Then, even though the 2004 season was another one of those second place finishes in the Pro-2 Championship points, the significant records for Evan that season was 11 top 5 finishes and a record setting 4 consecutive wins.
In 2005, CORR moved to the West and WSORR, World Series Off Road Racing, became the promoter/sanctioning body for the Midwest short course off-road racing series. Evan competed for the next 4 years in both series with great success, with many more wins, top 5’s, top 10’s and more 2nd place finishes in points. In 2008 he placed 4th in Pro-2 truck class WSORR Championship points with one 1st place, three 2nd places, and two more top fives out of 12 races, and he finished up the CORR Pro-2 truck class 17th in points in a shortened season. In 2009 Evan finished the TORC series season 7th in Pro-2 points with a limited budget.
The fact Evan Evans has been a Professional Championship off-road race truck driver for the last 22+ years is not his greatest achievement, even though he has had a phenomenal racing career. The facts that he did it all without the use of his legs is the achievement that surpasses anything that the rest of us might little understand or know how to overcome.
In 1989, a motorcycle accident changed Evans’ life. While riding near his home he hit an unseen construction ditch and the resulting accident left him paralyzed from the chest down.
“My worst nightmare came true, when the doctors told me my spinal cord had been severed,” says Evans. “But I decided right there. I was not going to give up.”
Evan developed an interest in racing competition at an early age. He began racing motorcycles, then moved to racing carts, and finally to off-road racing in trucks. In no time at all he was winning—in fact, winning four off-road desert races in a row. Sadly, five days after his win at the Fireworks 250 in Barstow, California, he was paralyzed.
Evan is not only a champion race driver but he has taken advantage of his celebrity in order to make himself available as a standout national spokesperson to persons with disabilities. Evan joined Chevrolet as a spokesperson for the GM Mobility Program; a program that helps people with their disability challenge, and driving a vehicle, by locating specific adaptive equipment and installers to help get them on the road.
Evans’ personal vehicle and his race truck are both fitted with adaptive hand controls that enable him to drive himself where he needs to go, or race around a dirt track at well over 120mph with a 950hp truck. These dirt tracks have obstacles of high banked turns and jumps that can toss the truck in a flying arch of more than 15 feet high, and farther than 100 feet in length. These adaptive hand controls will not make a disabled person a world famous race driver, that makes Evan special, but the controls will make that person mobile and free.
In addition to all of his accomplishments in short course off-road racing, in 2003 while he was having a very successful season, he quietly set a fast lap overall record at Bark River, MI. This was the first time a 2 wheel drive Pro-2 truck beat the fastest lap times of the 4 wheel drive Pro-4 trucks. Also, that year he qualified for the pole position for the “Fabulous Five” in the Borg Warner Cup at Crandon International Off-Road Raceway.
In 2000 Evan was given the opportunity to race a Chevrolet Duramax Diesel pickup truck up the prestigious Pikes Peak International Hill Climb. Because of the trucks unusual power plant and other classification factors, Evans’ ride was the only truck in the “High Performance Show Room Stock” class. In class he was mostly pitted against some 30+ Porsches and Toyota cars, yet Evan placed fourth in class and set a record for fastest diesel vehicle ever up the Pikes Peak climb. The record still stands.
On top of that, all based on that one race, he was named “Rookie of the Year” and was awarded the Ralph Bruning “NEVER GIVE UP” Award. An award that was very fitting, as those words had served Evan for the last eleven years as his personal motto.
“When other people with disabilities see me racing,” says Evan, I hope that they will be encouraged by the fact that I can still do what I always wanted to do, something that I love. I have this to tell them: No matter what you are going through in life, never give up.”