Before he was an Ultra4 USA competitor, Paul Wolff was already an off-road racer.
It’s just that the competition wasn’t quite as structured and it was a little less legal than it is when he straps into his car these days.
“We (my family) always raced each other through the woods at parks and stuff and we’ve actually been kicked out of parks for going too fast on the trails. So, it just kind of aligned where I can go to a park, run wide open and not get thrown out,” Wolff said with a laugh.
As a lifelong off-road fanatic, he’d always kept an eye on Ultra4 racing — mainly by way of watching King of the Hammers, the series’ crown jewel race that takes place in the rocky and mountainous terrain of Johnson Valley, Calif.
In 2019, Wolff got a glimpse into his future when he ventured out to the valley with his brother to serve as co-driver in the 200-mile endurance race. After finishing fifth, Wolff agreed to come back the next year.
“In 2020, we endo-ed the car through the desert — had a bit of bad luck there. But I was exposed to Ultra4 from that,” Wolff recalled.
As the Brighton, Ill., native continued to toy with the idea of launching his own Ultra4 career, he kept busy with pursuing the National Rock Racing Ass’n UTV Cup Championship.
After securing his second title in 2020, the rock bouncer was ready for something new.
Last year, Wolff became a full-time Ultra4 racer.
While juggling family life and race car maintenance, Wolff managed to stay the course and race at every round on the schedule.
A year later, as he sets sail on his sophomore campaign, Wolff is finding his groove within the Ultra4 community.
He’s rightfully — and quickly — earned respect as a series frontrunner.
Wolff hit the jackpot during his debut season, sweeping the east, west and national championships in the Ultra4 Pro UTV class. Now, with an invaluable number of lessons learned and rookie mistakes corrected, Wolff is once again a title contender.
“I’ve gotten better about taking care of cars,” Wolff said. “What I liked about rock bouncing was that you could go wide open and not have to reserve the car at all or be nice to it. You could just lay everything on the line every run, because it’s so short.”
The 34-year-old has also established himself as a bit of an anomaly within the off-road ranks. Not only does he wheel the No. 1018 Can-Am entry in Ultra4’s 4900 UTV category, but Wolff also races in the 4400 Unlimited division — which is considered the series’ premier class.
While both categories were somewhat foreign to him, making the jump from rock bouncing to wheeling the UTV and 4400 vehicles felt natural. Wolff attributes his smooth transition to childhood habits.
The story begins at a scrapyard.
“Working there with my dad, we used to go to farm auctions and pick up different cars and trucks and everything and bring them back home,” Wolff recalled. “Everything from combines, to cars and pickup trucks, to semis. So I developed the ability to adapt to cars very quickly.”
Decades later, Wolff is still relying on skills acquired from his teenage job to make a living as a full-time racer. The core adjustments he makes as a driver are more specific to the handling style of a UTV versus a 4400 entry.
The 4400 car is significantly heavier than the UTV, meaning it’s less agile and requires a slower turning radius. However, it also has more horsepower, meaning a driver can “power through things and over things” easier than in a UTV.
Compared to a rock bouncer, the technique is also a bit different with an Ultra4 vehicle, as it requires a delicate balance between finding speed and not pushing the car to the point where it falls apart on the course — and believe him when he says it can happen, because it has.
Wolff referenced his February trip to King of the Hammers as an example.
“We take off on the pole and we have a motor start coming apart on us immediately. Five miles in, the motor starts giving up. It was devastating,” Wolff said.
After two weeks of testing in the desert prior to the event, to have his efforts brought to an abrupt end within the first 30 minutes of racing was a difficult blow.
“It’s not a driver’s error. There was nothing I could do about it, it was just a freak problem,” Wolff said. “That was kind of devastating to my self-confidence. I was working really hard to build the team and start the biggest race of the year … and we had catastrophic failures.”
The Wolff Racing team had also taken a hit earlier in the week, when their shocks blew apart during the UTV race and ended their run — again, after Wolff started from the pole. With 68 days until the next points-paying Ultra4 race — the Anniversary Bash in Rush, Ky. — Wolff hauled his race machines 28 hours back to the shop and got to work.
As racing is his full-time job, the 34-year-old wears most of the hats on the team, be it driver, mechanic or team manager. His volunteer staff includes his wife “every once in a while,” and whatever buddies are available.
But the majority of the time Wolff spends in the shop, it’s just him and the race cars. Though part of this is due to limited funding, it’s also how he likes it.
“I prefer it to some degree. I don’t know how I’ll be able to completely let go of that side of it, because I think part of my success is the fact that I do the work to the trucks and the cars, so I know what kind of shape they’re in,” Wolff said.
Being hands-on in the shop, in turn, allows him to preserve the car better on the race course by knowing the strengths and weakness of the setup.
“I have a little bit of a fear of losing that, if you were to have a big crew working on the car all the time. The other side of that is, if you have a big enough crew, you can always have the car 100 percent,” Wolff said with a laugh.
His lead role as mechanic was imperative for his April weekend in Kentucky, as he had replaced the engine in his 4400 entry only four days before hitting the road for the Anniversary Bash.
Upon arrival, Wolff pre-ran the No. 1018 with break-in oil in the car on Thursday, then performed an oil change before Saturday’s race. Meanwhile, he debuted four new shocks on his UTV and tuned them throughout the weekend.
The result was spectacular, as Wolff clinched his first 4000 Unlimited win of the season in the 4400 class and finished second in the 4900 UTV division.
But the reason for the wide smile that crossed Wolff’s face standing atop the podium in Kentucky was two-fold. First, it put King of the Hammers in the past. Second, it fully proved all the work put in behind-the-scenes was worth it.
“There’s a lot of stuff I do that people don’t see,” Wolff said.
Beyond the long hours in the race shop, Wolff also keeps up a rigorous workout schedule to maintain race shape. He’s even turned his basement into his workout space to save time driving to and from the gym.
“The way I view it is, if this is what I want to do for a living, then I need to treat it seriously,” Wolff said. “The sport is getting extremely competitive and I think you’re going to have to be that way if you want to race against the top guys in the world.”
With that mindset, Wolff plans to do everything in his power to defend his 4900 UTV title and sweep the 4400 Unlimited championship at season’s end.
“We don’t show up to just finish the races. We show up and we want to win the races,” Wolff said. “That’s our major goal, to show up every time, at every race track and do everything we can to win the race.”
This story appeared in the June 7, 2023, edition of the SPEED SPORT Insider.
