Staying safe is the name of the game in any form of racing, but for the Mint 400, it gets taken up a notch adding off-road engineering guru and 2017 Off-Road Hall of Fame Inductee, Bill Savage, to the team as the Technical Director for the 2020 race. Savage and his team of seasoned veteran inspectors next March 3rd-8th in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Savage is the definition of an off-road veteran with 47 years of experience including opening his first welding shop in 1972 and first spectating the Baja 1000 in 1974. Since his first Baja experience, Savage was hooked and built a race car and won the 1979 Baja 1000 in his class.

His companies TMAG and later Speed and Performance by Design (SPD) built hundreds of off-road trucks that went on to win many races, including the Baja 500 and Baja 1000. SPD would eventually work for NASA, designing and building both Lunar and Mars rovers. Bill has been an off-road innovator and pioneer in the inspection, design, and manufacturing of safety equipment his entire life. He has authored rule books for every major off-road racing association for the past four decades. And he is currently the Technical Director for the Lucas Oil Off-Road Racing Series.

“Having Bill Savage write our rulebook and direct our technical inspections is really a dream come true,” said Mint 400 COO, Joshua Martelli. “He is literally the man who wrote the book – all of the books! Our number one priority at the Mint is the safety of our racers. And we need someone who is up to speed on all the changing and evolving specs in the more than fifty classes that race the Mint, including the bikes now. Bill and his team are really some of the most advanced and forward-thinking engineers in the sport. We are thrilled to have them on board.”

Savage and his team will be publishing a new rulebook for the Mint 400 in the coming weeks. The Mint 400 is going to make it available online and feature an easy to read breakdown of every class allowed at the race. In addition to making it easier for teams and racers there is going to be a dedicated technical email and toll-free phone number set up to help with any additional questions.

“When the Martelli Brothers approached me they made it clear that they wanted a safe, fair, and progressive technical strategy with the Mint,” said Mint 400 Technical Director, Bill Savage. “Safety and common sense technical design have been the backbone of my work for decades, and making racing fair is just a matter of thinking outside the box a little. I’m honored to be joining the Mint team with my crew of guys and look forward to examining the expected 700 race vehicles next year! This is really going to be fun!”

Savage and his staff stated that all vehicles that raced the Mint 400 in 2019 will be able to compete in 2020. There will be some new rules governing some of the pro motorcycle classes as well as some minor tweaks to the naming and numbering systems used by the Mint. But most of the classes will retain the more popular naming and numbering conventions. A complete breakdown on the classes and numbering systems will be published in the coming weeks.

How do you feel about the technical changes coming to the Mint 400? Do you think it will push this one race event to a multi-race series?