MotorActionMedia.com interviews Casey Mauldin, Sport & Ski racer and CEO of IPD Graphics as a part of the #DrivenByPassion series by ProWatercraftRacing.com.

Casey, could you tell me a little about your background in the sport? How did you get involved?

I raced my first race in 1993 after going to see a good friend of mine race 550s. It looked easy enough, I had no idea how hard my first race was going to be, or how bad I was going to do. I continued to race off and on until 2013, racing stand ups and WaveBlasters.

You have referred to yourself as a “Jet Ski Enthusiast”, awesome, I consider myself one too. What does being a Jet Ski enthusiast mean to you?

My core set of passions have always been being by the water, pushing myself physically, building and improving things mechanically, and things that push me creatively… Jet Skis combined all of these passions, and creates a healthy balance of all four.

 

Could you tell me a little about your skis? 

Currently, we [IPD Graphics] have a stock-class SX-R and a new IPD WaveBlaster 1100 project in the stable. I am one who enjoys laying down strong laps more so than just going fast in a straight line, so I keep the SX-R relatively stock under the hood and just implement a good tune on the motor, but then go crazy with the handling set up; so of course we have a lot of ProWatercraftRacing.com parts on the ski, and a lot of set up influence from Chris Hagest.

The IPD 1100 WaveBlaster is something we are currently working on. We are building an Open Spec Blaster that will be better than all of our previous projects that we have built…really cool stuff, stay posted! That’s all I can say about it at this time.

I understand that you are using ProWatercraftRacing.com front sponsons and rideplates on your ski. How have those handling components changed your ride?

We switched to ProWatercraftRacing.com sponsons from a modified set of Blowsion-type sponsons. We couldn’t believe how much the front sponsons improved the corner entry and exit, and the overall stability. We had a rideplate that we had been tweaking on and modifying to work optimally with the set up, then once we tried the Pro Watercraft ride plate, we could not believe again, how much of an improvement just the plate made over what we were working with before. Rear grip was the most noticeable attribute, but everything seemed to improve.

 

I know you were one of the first to see the all new Pro Force hull by ProWatercraftRacing.com, what was your initial reaction when you first saw it?

Not only did I get to see it, I spent a good amount of time riding it as well. It is game-changing, once the right tuners get their hands on the hull, the ski will be unstoppable with a good rider on it. There are so many elements about the Pro Force that made me think, “I can’t believe no one else has done this before”, it’s obviously the next step in stand-up evolution.

 

Do you think it’s important for athletes to have passion, why so?

I think it’s important to have passion about anything that you want to do well, especially for athletes because at the end of the day, genetics will only get you so far, but it’s your passion that is going to push you to become better.

 

As the owner of a company that deals with sponsorships, what kind of character do you search for in potential athletes?

Because we sel graphics, we have an unusual value point when it comes to sponsored athletes. When you sell performance based parts, your racers better be winning or else it reflects poorly on your brand. With graphics, our product is best represented on the beach in photography, so the character of the rider and how they draw visual attention is very important to us. Winning championships are nice, our IPD athletes won over 10 world championships collectively this year alone, but we often get more R.O.I from riders who are less know for their racing but have really good photography and social media resources. So ultimately, their character defines how effective they are going to be at all of the above.

 

Will we be seeing you on the track sometime next year?

Maybe… I won’t show up to race unless I’m well prepared physically, and the race season is our busy season, so as we continue to grow it gets more and more challenging to get into “race shape”, but I always keep hope alive!

 

Is there anything else you would like to add? 

I‘d like to thank MotorActionMedia.com for its efforts in promoting our sport. It’s great to see new media companies come in and do such a great job of promoting Jet Ski Racing, and do it with so much passion… thank you!

 

Is there anyone you would like to thank?

I’d like to thank Chris Hagest from ProWatercraftRacing.com for constantly innovating, Hot Products for always doing their best to support our sport, the Handlers from Pro Watercross for creating potential for new racing opportunities in our sport, along with Bomber Eyewear, Jettrim, Judge Motorsports, JAM Racing, RynoPower, and of course IPD Graphics.

Are you looking for the world’s leading handling specialists? Look no further than ProWatercraftRacing.com. Click here to check out their website.