The 2004 season was Blake’s first full year, and he largely competed at Tulsa‘s Port City Raceway. It‘s a good place to get your feet wet.
While many recognize the quality of young drivers who have matriculated from California‘s Cycleland Speedway and Red Bluff Outlaws, Port City has also produced a star-studded alumni class.
It is a fact not lost on the third-generation Hahn.
“It is crazy how many great young drivers are coming out of Port City,” he said. “It is good, tight racing, on a high-banked track with a good cushion. You have to learn to hit your marks, and the level of competition in Oklahoma is really good. Everyone is pushing each other to get better, and the track is conducive to sprint and midget racing.”
It is hard to dispute Hahn‘s perspective, but Tom Hahn knew the hazards of getting too comfortable at one place.
Accordingly, he began to plot of course that would aid his son‘s development.
“My dad had me travel a bit pretty quickly,” Blake noted, “because he thought I would improve faster if I ran some diverse race tracks. I‘m thankful I was able to do that. Because my dad was paying for everything at the time, we weren‘t able to travel a whole lot.”
It was here that the Janeway family offered an important boost to his career.
“They had a really good operation for micros and junior sprints,” he said. “And a few times I got to tag team with them and travel to some places I wouldn‘t have been able to. We were able to go to Garden City, Kansas and Sweet Springs, Missouri, not too awful far but, as a young kid, I felt like I was driving a cross the country.”
Even now that his son is in a sprint car, Tom Hahn feels this period was important to his development.
“We can go to tracks we haven‘t been to before,” said Tom Hahn, “and he seems to adapt to them real fast.”
Tom has been around racing his whole life and, while it is easy to be a bit nearsighted when assessing your child‘s ability, he knew Blake had talent.
“You can usually tell right away if someone has it or not,” Tom noted. “Now, people can improve, but from the beginning he was smooth and didn‘t take lots of chances.”
While it isn‘t in Blake‘s nature to beat his own drum, he does admit, “We won a few championships and I pretty much won every big race there was in a junior sprint. It was then that my dad realized it was time to move up. We decided to get our first micro, and we ended up getting Leon Bacon‘s old car.
“It was all yellow (a favorite family color) so it was ready to go.”
From this point on, his career took off. If one wished to use the tough Tulsa Shootout as a benchmark, it should be noted that Hahn has won eight Golden Drillers in five different classes.
Overall, he had his greatest success in the Ecotec midget division, capturing four titles, most recently in 2016.
As Blake moved into his teenage years, he began to understand that carrying the name Hahn in Oklahoma racing circles could be a bit of a mixed bag.
“When I was a kid I had no idea,” Blake said. “But when I started getting older I started to see what was going on. I could see some people treating me differently because they thought I was getting anything I needed, or whatever. That wasn‘t the case. My dad busted his ass to just get us a junior sprint, and then later, luckily, my grandfather was able to help out.
“My dad told me early on that he wasn‘t going to be able to help if I got a ride other than a micro, which I was fine with. I loved running a micro at Port. My cousin Matt, who works for ASCS now, was racing a little, but we were the first grandkids to start racing. Then we ended up selling my junior sprint to my cousin Brandon, so we had a two-car team. I had a micro and he had a junior sprint. That‘s when my grandpa came on board. They built a shop right behind their house, and that started the Hahn Racing team.
“Brandon does pit reporting for RacinBoys now. He likes to BS a little bit, so that has worked out well for him.”
Of all the cars he had raced previously, he thinks the Ecotec was a great “transition car” and put him in a good position to move to full midgets, and ultimately sprint cars.
When he took the leap forward, like all young drivers, he needed to lean on others to find his way.
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