General Tire is sponsoring Team USA's Darren Skilton, Sue Mead
and Tom Collins at the Dakar Rally, which started Jan. 1 and
runs through Jan. 16.
The race stretches across more than 5,500 miles of grueling
terrain from Argentina to Chile; General’s trio will be behind
the wheel of a Ford F-150 Raptor fitted with Grabber
competition tires.
Celebrated as the toughest and most widely watched motorsports
event in the world, the Dakar Rally is hosting more than 350
teams from around the globe.
“This is an exciting sponsorship for General Tire,” says
marketing director Travis Roffler. “We’ve made a major come-
back in motorsports in the past few years, and sponsoring Team
USA at the Dakar Rally is just another step in the plan. With
the reported 4.1 million spectators and 2.2 billion television
viewers the event had last year, this is the ultimate off-road
sponsorship opportunity for us.”
Skilton is an accomplished off-road racer. Mead says her stint
is “a dream come true.” Throughout a 22-year international
automotive journalism career she has raced and test-driven a
wide array of four-wheel vehicles. In 2008 she was inducted
into the Off-Road Motorsports Hall of Fame. Mead has three
published books and has years of experience as an automotive
editor for CNN.
The third driver, Collins, has participated in numerous extreme
adventures and “world firsts,” including the first motorized
traverse of Madagascar, the first motorized crossing of Borneo,
the first motorized traverse of Siberia’s Elictare River Valley
and the first 4X4 crossing of Colorado along the Continental
Divide.
Mead and Collins are celebrating their 60th birthdays during
the race; they can be followed online at
www.fordracingparts.com.
For more information visit www.generaltire.com.
