Go Speed Racer

So, my old man's a racer—well, used to be at least. My Dad gave up a racing contract with Kawasaki Racing (motocross) to wear the black name tag for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. When he returned, Kawasaki would not pick up the contract, but racing never left his blood. My Dad's a racer through and through. If it will go fast, he wants a piece of it.




He was born the same year the first Corvette rolled off the assembly line, in June 1953. Racing was and still is a part of him. He's attended Bondurant High Performance Racing School (http://www.bondurant.com)—how cool is that? My Dad's driven a formula car, and a Mustang at top race speeds. Awesome. I think I'm qualified to say, "My Dad's faster than your Dad."


Apparently, the agreement with my Mom after kids started arriving was that he would put away the motorcycles until one of us asked about them. Then, AND ONLY THEN, could he instruct the interested child about racing—but no funny business. She didn't want her boys hitting the wall at 200 mph! Well, Kolby grew up; and never asked. I grew up; and never asked. It was my younger brother, J.R., who said this phrase, “Dad, I think we oughta get a couple trail bikes and do some riding,” and landed himself two Kawasaki trail racing bikes—the SAME day!


I was on my mission at the time, but I came back and learned to ride on a Honda 250 CR off-road bike. What a beautiful machine! Since then, we've been pushing the limits of any machine that will carry a rider faster than we can walk.


Enter Miller Motorsports Park. Ah, sigh.


Miller Motorsports Park is heaven for someone with octane in his veins. I swear, I think my Dad would live here, if Mom would let him. It happens that Miller Motorsports hosted an AMA Superbike race and SuperMoto (if you don't know what these are, they're types of races) and Dad and I went to go see the races, and we've gone to a few since. My Dad likes to spend time with his kids one on one, and we haven't been able to do that much since I moved to Utah in 1996. Now, he's found something we can do together one on one.


But that's not all Miller Motorsports does! They've also go a professional karting track. Now, when I say “professional,” I'm not talking about your little Nazcart wannabe karts, we're talking race-grade chassis, with slicks, and ungoverned 4-stage motors—they'll do 50 mph under the piloting of the right driver. After you've demonstrated your proficiency, you can upgrade to RoTax carts, which will carry you into the 65–70 mph range. If you're really insane for adrenaline, you can move up to shifter carts that use a 125 cc engine with a clutch and geared transmission from their counterpart motorcycle class. Those carts will rocket you around the track at around 120 mph. There's another upgrade from there, but your face will melt when you find out how fast it will go. Suffice it to say that when Jeff Ward did an exhibition race at an Indy race, he ran faster lap times than the Indy cars!


Anyway, any old Joe can buy his way into these karts if he wants to. It's about $300 per person for a full day of racing instruction from a national champion kart racer! This was too good to be true. Dad bought an afternoon for father and son, and we went to the races! Our national champ was none other than 15-year old Colby Yardley. That name probably doesn't ring any bells for you—I know I had no idea who he was until he blew the wheels off me at the track. (Funny aside: this kid's WON national championships, and he can't even drive himself to work—He's only 15! He's still in driver's ed. He said he chuckled every time they try to teach him how to recover from a slide or what to do if you're hydroplaning.) Anyway, Colby taught us the way to race: how to apex, when to apex, where braking areas are, when to draft, when to corner, how to curb turn, and a lot more race blah blah that will bore you more than this post already has.



Then he gave us our race gear (helmet, neck stabilizer, race suit, and gloves) and took us out on the track. The first few laps were lead-follow: i.e. he drives the proper lines and we pay attention. After that, he loosed us for our own time on the track. We burned up the track at our own pace. Now that was fun! He followed us around and then pitted us to tell us how to improve our racing strategies. Each session, I got faster. Faster and faster I flew down the track. I got to the point that I could actually race with this national champ! Of course, he won every time, but I felt pretty good that I could hold my own with him for several laps.



So that's how our day went: blazing around the track at speeds and gs that would cause normal men to invest in Depends. I noticed part-way through our training that Colby wore no race suit—indeed he only wore a helmet, gloves, and an odd black vest with vertical slats. Turns out that odd black vest with vertical slats is called a Ribtector and is designed to keep karter's guts intact, and keep their rips from bruising or cracking under the g-force in the corners. At 5:00 p.m. I knew why he wore the Ribtector, and I vowed I would never kart again without one. My ribs are bruised badly enough that I can't raise my left arm over my shoulder (there are more right-handed corners than left—hence the bruising on my left side). I'm still sore and it's been a week and a half since I raced!


Anyway, I recommend it to anybody—plenty of fun, if you can take the speed. For an old racer man and his son, it still wasn't fast enough. We're looking into the shift-kart class. Look for another post under check flags...