Who’s who at Merge Racing?

Jim came to the states in the early nineties as a suspension specialist at White Brothers. His long career at White Brothers included Suspension Department Manager, Engineering Manager, Director of Manufacturing and Director of R&D. His time there included designing the exhausts systems for Factory Honda and Factory Yamaha, working to the requirements of riders that included Ricky Carmichael, Chad Reed, Kevin Windham, Andrew Short, Nate Ramsey, Travis Preston, Heath Voss and Honda’s ATV rider Tim Farr. Jim moved to Texas in 2005 to become the Director of R&D at Holigan Racing.

Michael Holigan started his career in motocross as the typical 125 Novice. After graduating from Texas Tech in the mid 80’s, Michael’s racing stopped to spend time on his real estate development business and to start a family.
In 2000 Michael became the primary sponsor of the #25 NASCAR Winston Cup team at Hendrick Motorsports as a way to promote his family business. After spending a lot of time that year with the team and winning the final race of the season, the NAPA 500 in Atlanta, the racing bug had become a full on fever to go racing again.

Michael worked with Dave Walters and Lucky Nichols to launch an AMA Supercross/Motocross team based in Dallas in 2004. The team had success with their own documentary series on Spike TV and later SPEED, and working with sponsors that included Samsung, Sprint, RadioShack, PowerBar, GMC, DEP Sport and others. Jim came on as Director of R&D in the fall of 2005.

Jim and Michael teamed up to launch Merge Racing Technologies in early 2007.
Steve Matthes was a professional mechanic on the AMA Supercross and Motocross Series for 11 years.  During that time he wrenched for Factory KTM, Factory Yamaha and others.  Riders he worked with include Timmy Ferry, Kelly Smith and Nick Wey. 

Steve transitioned from being a mechanic to the media side of the business by writing a weekly column for Racer X (Observations), and doing podcasts and webcasts at each race.  Steve became the Brand Manager for Merge Racing Technologies in January 2008.

This wealth of knowledge and experience has lead to the creation of some of the most innovative products available.


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