The budget for the Polaris race team was cut in half for 1975 from the record high budget in 1974. Regardless, 1975 would be another banner year for the Polaris race team: Bernat won the World Championship, Ed Monsrud wins the I-500 and Larry Rugland won the Hetteen cup, the Karawatha cup emerged as high point driver of the year in the Professional Drivers Circuit (PDC). Don Omdahl won his fair share as well, and dominated in the 250cc class.
Since they still did so well in 1975 with half the budget, the corporate office decided that in 1976, the budget would get cut close to zero.
That marked the beginning of the end of the Starfire Kids era. Although no one knew it at the time, it was also the very beginning of the Midnight Blue Express era. When Larry Rugland and Leroy Lindblad left Polaris to go race for the dreaded rival known as Bombardier, Bob Eastman found room in the budget to hire Jerry Bunke.
