“I didn‘t want to race midgets and have to travel to Wisconsin and Indiana,” Steve Gennetten said. “I knew where my bread and butter was at. After the business got rolling, I got my own sprint car because I wanted to control my racing. I had raced with other people, both good and bad, and I learned that having your own stuff wasn‘t that bad.”
Beaver raced close to his home base and visited State Fair Speedway in Sedalia enough to capture the track championship in 1998. Even that got to be a bit too much and the following year he sold his equipment. He had a chance to do some 410 racing for Jeff and Jerry Smith and while he had some success, he realized he was not all in.
He knew every inch of the highway between his Missouri home and Iowa‘s Knoxville Raceway and it allowed him plenty of time to ponder his situation.
“I spent a lot of time going up and down that road thinking about boat docks,” he said. “It hit me. I started thinking I‘m not taking food off of Terry McCarl‘s table because he isn‘t there thinking about boat docks, he‘s thinking about racing.”
One additional factor hastened the move to put his racing career on the back burner. In 1999, Ayrton was born and if his son showed an interest in the sport Beaver was determined to offer all the help he could.
Ayrton‘s first taste of racing came in a go-kart at Lasoski Speedway near Warrensburg, Mo., and he took to things quickly. From there he branched out and raced with the Mid America Series traveling to places such as Thunderlake Speedway, which rested a stone‘s throw from Lakeside Speedway in Wolcott, Kan. He captured the Triple Crown with the Mid America Series, score more than 100 wins and twice finish on the podium during the Tulsa Shootout.
After five solid years in karts Ayrton moved to micro sprints racing primarily at Missouri‘s Sweet Springs Motorsports Park. In 2013, he captured a championship at the track and from there he began competing in the Outlaw division with POWRi and occasionally at Double X Speedway in California, Mo.
He used five second-place finishes to finish second in the POWRi standings in 2015. While he is proud of the overall outcome, he is still aggravated that he has yet to score a micro win with the series, deeming it “a steppingstone I never accomplished.”
In fact, he admits he is still interested in finding a way to get this monkey off his back. Regardless of his inability to find victory lane in a POWRi-sanctioned event, he has climbed the top step of the podium elsewhere.
In 2017, he grabbed the previously elusive Golden Driller in the Winged A class during the Tulsa Shootout, and in 2018 while piloting the Adam Schmidt Bailey Chassis Co., car he notched wins at Bell-Clair Speedway and at Southern Illinois Speedway in Illinois.
While the younger Gennetten says he “almost discards 2017,” it was an important year as he made his debut in a 360 sprint car. His frustration was lost time due to a surgery and a blown engine that sidelined him late in the year. The record shows he took a step forward in his overall development. Racing primarily at Double X Speedway, Gennetten nailed down two victories and was named the track‘s rookie of the year. He was also deemed the National 360 Rookie of the Year by the National Sprint Car Hall of Fame‘s year-end awards poll.
All available evidence suggests the transition to sprint cars was smooth, but Gennetten said there were significant differences between the cars beyond sheer power.
“There was a learning curve in how you ran the micro versus how you run the sprint car,” he explained. “With the micros you don‘t have to use the brakes as much. You can use the chain and the power of the motor to help it turn, whereas with the sprint car you really can‘t get out of the gas. You have to stay in it and use a lot of brake. That was my biggest adjustment, just learning how the pedals worked differently.”
Over the next two seasons he followed a similar schedule. In his words, he still “bounced around in the micros,” but he began to branch out more in sprint cars. Significantly, in 2019, he made his first start at Knoxville Raceway. He wasn‘t intimidated, speaking to a trend that has continued as his career has progressed.
“I like tracks like that, big fast half miles like Knoxville, Sedalia, Terre Haute and Eldora,” he said. “So naturally I liked Knoxville right away. I never really felt overwhelmed by the speed of it. We were pretty good my first night there. We won the B and I think they had 48 cars there that night.”
As the calendar turned to September, Gennetten turned his first laps in a 410 sprint car at Jacksonville (Ill.) Speedway, winning his heat and posting a top-five feature finish.
There was a lot to build on heading into 2020. But like everyone, his plans were derailed by the pandemic. While he would have liked more time behind the wheel, it became clear that if he remained committed to his craft, he had a chance to race at a high level for years to come. While there are certainly exceptions, it is generally true that a parent who has raced can assess the talent of their offspring with a clear eye.
Nonetheless, it took Steve Gennetten a little time to consider where all of this could lead.
“It‘s weird,” he said. “When we were racing karts, we won nearly everything we wanted to win except the Tulsa Shootout. I remember meeting all those people who were like Jeff Gordon‘s parents. I was just trying to do something with my kid. I knew he was good and didn‘t tear stuff up, which is big. I think when we got a 410 motor, I really saw that he had potential.”