Some of the best snowmobile bench racing occurs in the summer months, when the pace and pressure to perform have notched down considerably and there’s a spirit of reflection that bubbles up and into conversations.
While shooting this heritage video for FOX Shox last summer with Kirk and Tucker Hibbert, the father-son duo took a break and sat on each other’s respective race sleds.
Kirk climbed on Tucker’s ISOC National winning 2014 ZR6000R SX mod sled (right), while Tucker threw a leg over Kirk’s 1993 I-500 winning ZR440.
Of course the two remarked about the size differences between the two sleds, as well as rider position, seats, ergonomics and such.
Kirk joked that he could scoot around pretty good on either sled, but he wondered if Tucker would be able to work his magic on something as old as a ’93 ZR.
Some good-natured teasing ensued.
Then they switched and got on their own sleds. There was a bit of laughter at the difference they felt switching between the two.
I can tell you from having sat on each of the sleds myself, that the differences are glaring, maybe even a little bit comic. The most noticeable is how much higher you sit on a new machine.
Tucker made some crack about how there can’t be many things that are better about an old ZR compared to a new one. Maybe not anything!
It took Kirk 0.372 of a second to reply…
“Here’s something you can’t do as well on a new sled as you can an old one.”
There was no arguing with that.
My memory is a little fuzzy, but Kirk may have even said something along the lines of, “If we raced cross-country against each other with these sleds, this is how I’d wait for you at the finish line.”
(I don’t know about you, but I think Kirk looks pretty normal on either sled. But Tucker looks a bit goonish on the older ZR.)
Thanks for reading.