Chris got his first taste of racing as a 6-year-old boy in Bethel, Maine. His dad crafted a little clay track on the family farm, and cobbled together a go-kart using a 5-horsepower Briggs and Stratton engine commandeered from the wood splitter. The more laps Chris took on the loose gravel surface, the more he learned about – and loved – driving fast. Even more, he loved drifting, where he’d slide around corners with his front wheels pointing in the opposite direction of the turn. From there, it was an easy transition to rally racing, especially in a town that annually hosted the New England Forest Rally, a national rally racing championship race. Back then, Chris, his brother, Forest, and their dad, Richard, used to go to every rally event they could find across Maine and New Hampshire. It was at one of those events – Climb to the Clouds, a hill climb up Mount Washington – that 14-year-old Chris made a split-second decision that changed the course of his life. He and his father were working crowd control at the climb when a driver crashed into a tree and his car burst into flames. Without thinking, Chris rushed to the burning vehicle and pulled the trapped driver out, saving his life. Chris was honored for his bravery with a Carnegie Foundation Hero Fund medal and a check for $3,500. He used the money a few years later to buy his first rally car, a caged shell of a 1990 Volkswagen Golf that was still disassembled.
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Over the next few years, Chris put the parts back into the car, and even received academic credit for his efforts. Unfortunately, the aging engine blew up the first time he tried to drive the car, but Chris – the eternal optimist – just hunted down another engine and started again.
“In road racing, you see the same 18 turns a thousand times; in rally racing, you see a thousand turns once,” Chris said. “You have to trust your co-driver to make it through; he or she has to trust you. It’s a lot more than just man and machine.” __________
__________ Rally racing is about so much more than hitting jumps and sliding through corners. It’s also about teamwork. Because each race is run on an unfamiliar course, each driver is completely reliant on their co-driver to chart the wisest – and fastest – route to the finish line. The co-driver is armed with a road map that details every aspect of the path ahead, from ditches and rocks to the length of straightaways and the angle of corners. He or she uses that map to deliver a constant set of directions to the driver throughout the race.
Chris kept entering races, and kept winning them. By the time he was 25 years old, he was already a four-time national rally racing champion, and was tearing up rally stages in exotic locales like Greece, Finland, Portugal, and Wales. He was living the life he’d dreamed about since he was a 6-year-old kid driving go-karts around a homemade track on the family farm. “Chris Duplessis is by far one of our most spectacular drivers in the Rally America National Championship who consistently exceeds what is possible in a 2WD rally car,” Rally America owner Bill Fogg was quoted as saying.