The BLOCK: Why is it beneficial for Chevrolet Performance as a brand to be involved in off-road racing?

Dom Lester: Anything that a customer can do to the vehicle, they will. Especially here in the West and the Southwest, but throughout the U.S. or anywhere in the world, we want to make sure that we get that real-world exposure. That's why we race out here in Nevada or in some of these pretty severe climates. The reality is customers do use their vehicles this way, and it is the ultimate test lab.

In this case, Chad's truck is 90% stock. There are things we have to do for safety, like add a roll cage and a fire suppression system, but it's a base, bone-stock truck. It allows us to go beat on it here in the desert and then take what we learned here and really turn it into value for the customer out of that. We can truly transfer that technology. I know in a lot of places in racing the terminology of "tech transfer" gets thrown around loosely, but in the case of off-road racing, it is about as authentic as you can get. It's something we're really proud of.

The Colorado now holds the record here at the Mint and in the Best in the Desert racing series of finishing every single race it's entered since 2017. That is just simply awesome. It shows the engineering, the durability of the things that we do whether it's at our Yuma Proving Ground or the Milford Proving Grounds or the things we do in the design shop in Warren. When we come out here and showcase it, the proof is in the pudding.

TB: You have had a pretty long relationship now with Chad Hall and all of Hall Racing. Why are he and his team ideal for this program and why are they good ambassadors for the brand?

DL: Great question. One of the things that's really unique with Chad is he's able to take the truck to the limit, but he's able to give great feedback. That's not something that every driver or race team has. A lot of racers will go out and test something or drive something and if it fails, they'll say, "It broke." You're like, "What did you do? What was it? How did it feel? What was the environment or the conditions?" A lot of racers, I won't name names, they suffer from that. They're hot shoes but they can't really give you that feedback.

Chad has the innate ability to not only be the hot shoe but to be able to give that feedback in a way that is constructive and put it in the manner that we can actually make it into an engineered solution. And that's not trivial. He's been able to do that year after year and we continue to extend our relationship with him because we realized that's a rare talent.

Then as an ambassador he's able to showcase the product and obviously speak well to it, but not only what the product is but what it's not. He is able to give a good balance, and the Hall family are legends in this space. Their pedigree and their name carries a lot of weight and gains us a lot of bona fides. That's something that we also value. The Bowtie has a lot of brand equity, but Hall Racing has a lot of equity in this space, too, so it's a win-win relationship.

TB: Related to things that are measurable, in most other types of motorsports your goal is to win. In off-road racing, just finishing is a big deal. How do you approach it differently and how do you measure success?

DL: That's a good point. Winning is still paramount, but because of this being more of a production-based racing program, we always have to balance that value that we're returning to the product. It's really easy to get in the trap of making some bespoke modification, but does that provide value back to the base program? Because I wear both hats as a chief of the base program, I'm always making sure we aren't trying to color outside the lines.

So that's something that you're always trying to balance. In this particular case it's not just going fast and winning, which is great, but it's to show that the part is durable, that the part is meeting its performance objectives. We're trying to make sure that what we are selling at the dealership is desert-proven, desert-tested and desert-validated. It's not just standing the world on its ear. We are always balancing that, but we want to make sure the truck continues to take checkered flags.

The reality is it's not a trivial thing to build a truck that's hardened and durable and able to last these environments. There's not a huge truck count, but that says a lot too because folks that do come out here oftentimes don't finish. The challenges are welcome.

TB: Is there anything else you want to add or talk about from a brand or engineering perspective?

DL: From an engineering perspective, we don't get this too often. To be able to have a test lab that is mirroring what you do in production is a very unique thing that we are doing and we are taking advantage of. I think it provides a lot of value to our customer that there is something in the Colorado ZR2 or there's something in the Silverado ZR2 where we can literally say, "Yeah, we learned that at the racetrack."

Those things are priceless as far as the value to return back to the customer. You hear me talk about customers a lot, because with me being the chief for the production program, that's really where my eye is. Then I come out here once a year or a couple times a year with the truck and all my team and when we do the post-race debrief, one of the first questions out of my mouth is, "What did we learn last week and what does that mean to us or the production programs?"

It's a unique experience, a unique opportunity that has a lot of value.