Chris Paiva

Driver/Co-Driver, Fabricator, Engineer, Mechanic

As a third generation Ford engineer, I grew up a gearhead. As soon as I could walk, my dad had me shagging tools and soon I’d be helping him work on cars, motorcycles, lawn mowers… if it had wheels, I was in. It wasn’t until my senior year spring break that I was introduced to off-road. Three friends and I headed to Moab to go mountain biking for the week. When we showed up, the town was overrun with Jeeps. Unbeknown to us, we had stumbled across Easter Jeep Safari. We were hooked. We spent the better part of the week watching people destroy their trucks on dump bump and potato salad hill while the mountain bikes collected dust back at the hotel room. When we got back to Detroit, I purchased my first 4wd, a 1999 Ford Ranger. That fall I headed off to Michigan Tech where I joined the Michigan Tech Four Wheelers club which is where I met Tad Dowker. Together, we spent the next 5 years skipping class to build, break, and rebuild our trucks. There was an underlying sense of competition that kept driving us to outdo one another.

After graduation, we went our separate ways. We kept in touch but life started to get in the way. I started at Ford Motor Company as a chassis engineer in 2006 and my passion for off-road soon landed me as the lead development engineer / driver for the Ford F150 Raptor. Through my work with Ford Performance, I met Dave Cole and was invited to the 2017 King of the Hammers. Of course, I was hooked again. Since then we have competed in 2018 and 2019 King of the Hammers, Finishing 25th in 2019. After the 2019 race, Tad and I decided to purchase our own car and start Northshore Raceworks with the goal of using our experience and engineering background to compete at the highest level of off-road racing. See you on the lakebed…