Steve Sourapas' Corona Trophy Truck

The Ford F-150 Steve Sourapas #6 Corona Trophy Truck is the fastest beer wagon this side of the Mississippi. Nicknamed the "Beerman", Steve is a regular of the SCORE desert racing circuit, where he can usually be found piloting the blue and yellow Porter built beast at highly irrational speeds. Steve and his team entered into the Trophy Truck ranks this year after many successful seasons in class 1, using this season to learn the truck and doing their best to harness its potential in the desert. We recently had the opportunity to photograph the truck unskinned, as it was being prepped for the Baja 1000.

The full 4130 chromoly steel chassis was conceived on the computer, utilizing state of the art CAD technology. Once perfected there, the beasts skeleton could be constructed by the master fabricators at Porter Race Cars, of Riverside, CA. King shocks smooth out the harsh desert terrain for the 5,250lb truck. To get the vehicle running at the front of the pack, Sourapas elected to go with a Ford small block v8 Powerplant, which makes just over 700 Horsepower. This power winds it's way to the ground through a Rancho Transmission and a Cassale V-drive, and finally through a set of BFGoodrich 37" Baja Projects mounted on Robby Gordon beadlocks. The massive Fuel Safe 75 gallon fuel cell stores just enough gas to make it between pits... Trophy Trucks are generally not known for their fuel economy. When Steve decides to let off the gas and give the brakes a tap, enormous CNC calipers and rotors on all four corners will be there to quickly bring the truck to a halt.

For Steve and the rest of the Corona crew, this first season with the truck was spent fine tuning and testing, doing their best to work out the bugs and get the truck where it belongs, on the podium. Unfortunately for the team, the truck has been plagued with mechanical difficulties all year, resulting in many DNFs, and effectively removing the truck from contention in this years point championship. After the blown tranny at this years Primm race, Sourapas enlisted the help of the Herman Motorsports crew to prep and tune his truck, ensuring that his truck will not be off the podium for long.

Watch out for these guys next season... it's the sleeper truck of the year.