Douglas Drussel’s contributions to Colorado Motorsports have been varied and impressive. He began his racing career on the drag strip, where he raced a 1957 T-Bird modified with a 427 Ford engine and held the record for the B Modified Sports class for a number of years at Holoyoke Dragway.
Doug operated a motorcycle dealership in the early 70’s and began motocross racing. He won the Purgatoire River Run off-road motorcycle race from Las Animas to La Junta in 1974 and was positioned to win the next year but ran out of gas 100 yards before the finish. He rode with the Rokon Factory motorcycle racing team and won the Rocky Mountain Enduro Circuit Open Expert Class on a 450cc Rokon Automatic in 1975. Doug’s exceptional fabricating skills led to a deal with Rokon to build the RX/C 340 prototype. The company went out of business before the bike reached production, but many innovative features Doug developed for that prototype are still in use today. Doug continued an active riding career and won Sports Riders Association of Colorado Enduro Circuit Open A class and Overall State Championships in 1975 and was named the 1986 Colorado 500 Invitational Rider of the Year.
Doug’s career took a new turn in 1978, when he sold the motorcycle dealership and opened a machine shop named Drussel Precision. He began building parts for competitive Pulling Tractors, including advanced turbo charging and other competition components for these exotic, ultra-high powered machines. The list of products Doug developed for Pulling competitors over the years is extensive, and his reputation as a leader in innovation and quality grew as his tractors won events nationwide. Doug built and drove the “Good Vibrations” pulling tractor, equipped with a turbocharged 1100 cubic inch 32 valve V8 Sherman Tank engine in the 12,000-pound class at a number of national pulling meets. In addition to the competition parts Doug created for this unique motorsport, he remained active on the motorcycle side of things, inventing the Rev-Lock automatic clutch that revolutionized trail riding techniques and received industry-wide recognition in 1999.
Doug continued trail riding throughout his life and has served as a guide for the Colorado 500, a Charity Dirt Bike Ride over some of Colorado’s most challenging mountain trails and was Co-Founder of Trails Preservation Alliance in Colorado which conducts The Colorado 600 Charity Ride as a Year-End banquet for the organization each year.
In addition to these valued, “behind the scenes” contributions to Colorado motorsports, Doug has created a legacy of superbly designed and built specialty components for a wide array of disciplines over decades of dedicated work that has benefitted countless competitors. With great respect for these career accomplishments, Doug Drussel was inducted into the Colorado Motorsports Hall of Fame with the class of 2024.
Recent Comments