SEMA Week Kicks Off with the Off Road Motorsports Hall of Fame
- Competition Category- Includes Motorcycles and ATV's, Off-Road Racing, Rally, Rock Crawling and Sand Sports
- Recreation Category- Includes Four Wheeling, Motorcycles and ATV's
- Pioneer Category- Includes Advocate, Industry, and Journalism
All of the nominees must have had at least fifteen years’ experience and involvement in Off-Road Motorsports. The nominees must have built, designed, driven, maintained, owned, prepared, piloted, promoted, ridden or supported an off-road vehicle. On a personal level, this is one of my favorite events of the year. I get to rub elbows with my childhood heroes, guys like Sal Fish and Rod Hall. Both of those legends are in the Off Road Motorsports Hall of Fame, and this year five more worthy names were added to the list. They included: Marty Fiolka- As one of desert racing’s most knowledgeable historians, Marty Fiolka has a reputation for his ability to perform extensive research, publishing his first book “1000 Miles to Glory”, and writing countless articles for Dirt Sports magazine. He was also the Associate Producer for the movie Dust to Glory and is currently completing another movie titled Baja Social Club about the earliest Baja racers. He has been instrumental in preserving the history of the sport, in many areas like organizing a parade of historic race vehicles from Tijuana to Ensenada as part of the 40th Anniversary of the Baja 1000; helping to re-launch the legendary Meyers Manx, and supporting Bruce Meyers to race his final race in 2014; and growing the new NORRA vintage rally movement. Del Albright- Fighting for land use access can be a thankless job, but that has never deterred Del Albright. He has spent time working on trails, attending meetings, writing letters, joining and starting organizations, and meeting with legislators to effectively save access to public lands. While he is known for doing all of these things, in addition to being the ambassador for the Blue Ribbon Coalition, his most significant contribution to off-road motorsports sets him apart from others in land-use: educating and mentoring the OHV community. His extensive background in leadership, supervision, and management has allowed him to mentor many other land-use advocates through Recreational Leadership Training courses and Volunteer Leader and Land Stewardship classes. Bill Sanders- One of the original editors of Four Wheeler Magazine, Bill Sanders brought off-road racing to the masses. Besides being involved with the monthly magazine, Sanders took time to become a real off-road racer. He drove a propane-powered Toyota FJ40 to a victory in Class 3 in the 1973 Mexican 1000. This was the first victory in Baja for Toyota, long before Ivan Stewart became a household name. Bill helped to grow off-road motorsports into a sport with worldwide recognition during the early years of off-road racing, and provided a place for those who were also supporting the sport to showcase their work. Dave Ashley- Whether on motorcycles, buggies, off-road trucks, or stadium vehicles, Dave Ashley has seen the winner’s circle. His career started when he won a gold medal for the United States (and his Yamaha sponsor) in the International Six Day Trials in Austria. At age 18, Dave was involved in a tragic head-on collision that ended in a fatality. This accident inspired Dave to vow to make off-road racing a safer sport. In his pursuit of safety, he chaired the drivers’ safety meetings for many of his races, as well as worked with race promoters to avoid hidden hazards. Dave took his passion for safety to vehicle manufacturers and, for the last 22 years, he has worked with the transmission, safety, engine, chassis development, motorsports and special vehicle teams (SVT) of Ford Motor Company, as a consultant in their testing, research, and development efforts. Nye Frank- A successful career as a designer and car builder proved that Nye Frank had a unique and comprehensive understanding of performance, from conception to completion, for a wide variety of disciplines from off-road racing to drag racing to land speed records. Nye was drawn to off-road racing because of the lack of overbearing rules that suffocate many forms of traditional racing. His work with shock absorbers in the 80’s was far ahead of its time. He is best known for his innovative use of air shocks with the Mazda program in MTEG (Mickey Thompson Entertainment Group) and later with Rob MacCachren in SODA and CORR. Many of the concepts Nye created have now been adopted by the industry, such as his approach to suspension tuning and the relationship between springs and shocks to form a complete suspension. 
