From pit areas to grandstands across the country, easily the most common response when one is asked how they developed an interest in racing is, “My dad got me into it.”
While most racers remain Friday and Saturday night heroes, for some, their natural talent and competitive spirit have elevated them to become winners at the highest levels. Many of these professionals have children who have followed in their fathers’ footsteps.
Being one of these racing dads provides a unique perspective as they help develop their kids’ careers. But at heart, they are fathers first who speak with pride as they discuss the accomplishments of their children.
Ten-time NASCAR Cup Series race winner and FOX television analyst Clint Bowyer has a 7-year-old son, Cash, whose career is just getting started. He competes in the Beginner Box Stock class at Millbridge (N.C.) Speedway. Each week he races against a full field of karts, often alongside other recognizable names from the NASCAR garage.
It was natural for people to ask Cash when he was going to get behind the wheel, but his father was apprehensive about going racing at first, simply because he is well aware of the time and sacrifice required by families.
It was not that long ago that Clint Bowyer himself was a young racer who was traveling from his Emporia, Kan., home with his parents and siblings to hit the track.
Bowyer also notes the importance of kids having the opportunity to try other sports at a young age; perhaps his son wasn’t destined to be a race car driver.
“It was important for me to have him go out and try other sports and see if he liked them, see if he mentally took to them,” Bowyer said. “We did the baseball thing, it’s every bit as competitive as racing is and your commitment to it.”
That commitment, desire and the willingness to learn is something he looks for in Cash and other young racers as they hone their craft.
A fun-loving yet fierce competitor during his time in the driver’s seat, Bowyer acknowledges the need to let children find success and celebrate their accomplishments, but even more so, he believes the learning aspect is paramount for children his son’s age.
“I think it’s important to teach kids to be winners,” he said. “I think it’s important to teach them what that feels like, have them taste that and want more of it and work hard for that. But I also think at this age and development it’s so important to teach them how to race.”
He uses the example that sitting on the pole, leading every lap and standing on the car in victory lane isn’t always the best lesson.
“I’ll let you celebrate that once or twice, but after that, we’re beginners, we’re 7 years old and that’s not what we’re trying to learn,” Bowyer said. “Because eventually, I think that will catch up with you. I want you to learn (from) the school of hard knocks, I want you to learn the appreciation of what that means. That doesn’t mean that we just showed up and spent more money than everybody else and had the fastest car and took the trophy. That’s not racing. Racing is competitively trying to figure out how to pass those cars in front of you until there aren’t any more.”
Bowyer also talks fondly of the uncertainty of racing with 7-year-olds (like when they refuse to move off the bottom because dad said to stay there even if a line of cars passes on the outside), the fun he has at Millbridge with his young family and the blue-collar nature of many of the people there.
That type of racing resonates with Bowyer, and despite the weekly battle to be the best, it’s important that his son stays grounded.
“Just be humble,” Bowyer said. “That means more to me than anything.”
While Bowyer’s son is still very young, three-time NHRA Top Fuel champion and Pittsboro, Ind., resident Antron Brown is a father of three accomplished Jr. Dragster racers who are all young adults or teenagers.
His oldest, Arianna, 20, made multiple final rounds in her time as a racer, but has since gone on to college and is pursuing a career in dance. However, Anson Brown, 17, is currently in his final year of junior dragsters, having raced since he was 8 years old.
During that period, he became a champion in the Midwest. He will soon move into the Super Comp category in the Sportsman ranks. Lastly, 14-year-old Adler, the youngest of the Brown children, has been racing Jr. Dragsters since the age of 6.
Anson Brown was playing a variety of stick-and-ball sports, with his father coaching many, when he announced his desire to race. He started in go-karts, but soon Anson said he wanted to go drag racing like his father. The other Brown children followed.
Antron Brown said he tries to provide the best equipment he can for his kids, but the desire, will and effort has to come from each of them internally.
“I always want to win, so I always try to give them the best that I can to give them the advantage to where if the car is on point, it is all up to them,” Brown said. “So I just work really hard on the race vehicles to my best ability where they’re as consistent as possible and I keep it simple.”
Antron Brown is one of the most popular competitors in NHRA, and also one of the toughest. They are traits he has instilled in his children as part of their burgeoning racing careers.
“I teach them about preparing before you get to the race track,” he said. “You don’t show up and your car needs to be worked on. You show up and you’re ready to go down the race track. Like the oil’s in it, the clutch is serviced, I put it all in their realm and win, lose or draw, when they lose I am really cool with it. … I can see in their face, they’ve got the same determination like I have when I lose, and they want to fix it and make it better.”
Brown has also seen lessons learned from Jr. Dragster racing follow his children into other areas of their lives, from schoolwork to other sports, even to playing video games.
It’s the constant push to get better that motivates them in racing, and Brown believes they then understand that while getting an A on a test is an accomplishment, it’s ultimately applying that knowledge to the real world that is equivalent to a championship.
As a parent, Brown has enjoyed seeing his children learn lessons as teenagers he didn’t completely understand until he was in his mid-20s.
“The constant advice that I always keep returning to with my kids is you can never do enough work,” Brown said.
For Bahama, N.C.’s Scott Riggs, a multi-time winner in the NASCAR Xfinity and Camping World Truck Series, a longtime Cup Series racer and a short-track star in the Southeast, it was quickly apparent his son, Layne, shared his natural talent.
Today, the two are developing the bond shared between parents and their adult children.
At 4 years old, Layne Riggs was beginning to show traits of being a talented driver, and as he got older, he would often race with his dad and his friends on a dirt kart track where the races sometimes got physical.
Yet, despite him only being around 10, his talent was again obvious. A couple of Scott Riggs’ friends told his wife, Jai, that Layne needed to be in some kind of race car. It was a message she took to heart.
The Riggses knew the commitment it would require and had a conversation to ensure they were ready to go all in.
“I asked my wife, ‘Do you really know what you’re asking?’” Scott Riggs said. “‘Because you can’t just go play in racing. It’s something you’ve got to live and breathe, sleep with all the time.’ And she said, ‘Yes, he deserves it, we need to, he needs an outlet.’”
Layne Riggs began in a four-cylinder car at the age of 10 and steadily worked his way up through limited late models, then took part in his first race with the late model stock division of the CARS Tour the day he turned 14.
Now 20, Riggs is one of the most successful drivers in CARS Tour history and recently announced his intention to compete for a NASCAR Weekly Series national championship.
Scott Riggs still rides dirt bikes on occasion to get his racing fix, but otherwise he has turned his attention to competing from behind the scenes as he furthers his son’s career.
“At this point, the only thing that even would drive me to get back behind the wheel would be an opportunity to be out there with Layne,” he said. “I feel like he’s one of the most pure, talented racers that I’ve ever been close to and I feel like he’s better than me. He might not be quite as aggressive as my personality is, but when it comes to the race car he’s just as aggressive and I feel like even more talented as far as feeling what the car’s doing.”
Scott Riggs and his father, Russell, who traveled to nearly all of his son’s races, simply continue to preach to Layne the virtue of patience and not to overdrive the car.
Layne and Scott Riggs’ relationship has evolved over the years, but it has as much to do with Layne growing up as anything else.
“Now, he’s not a 10-year-old kid getting in the car, now, he’s a young man that gets in the car,” Scott Riggs said. “I have a lot of confidence in his craft.”
When children become adults, new opportunities arise for parents and dirt late model legend Billy Moyer is one of only a select few drivers who has gone wheel-to-wheel with one of their kids. Moyer raced his son Billy Jr. for many years at dirt tracks around the country, competing out of the same shop in Batesville, Ark.
“You approach it different,” Billy Moyer said of racing his son. “When he was on the track, if he was in front of me, behind me or whatever, I’d always kind of keep a look out on him.”
The elder Moyer, long known as “Mr. Smooth,” won more than 800 feature races in his long career before retiring from full-time driving and moving to Arizona.
Billy Jr., aptly nicknamed “Kid Smooth,” followed his father into the grueling world of dirt late model racing, first playing with Hot Wheels cars in the dirt while his father raced. He competed on four-wheelers on a local basis and helped Moyer with his car before eventually deciding he wanted to race.
“I didn’t push him into it by any means, I wanted him to do it if he wanted to do it,” the elder Moyer said. “I loved doing it. It was good for me. I met a lot of great people and I made a decent living. I was able to pay my bills and raise my family.”
However, dirt racing is a difficult way to make that living for the constant work and grueling schedule it entails. Moyer knew the challenges his son would face.
Moyer Jr., 34, has a young family of his own and although he doesn’t travel quite as much as his father did, he is still forced to balance life and racing.
“I think he’s probably better at that than I was,” Moyer said. “He’s a good dad, I can see that, and he takes care of his family.”
Despite still racing himself for much of his son’s career, Moyer watched nearly every lap of Billy Jr.’s that he could, and over the years gave him tips on how to time restarts, attack other drivers’ weaknesses and a variety of other competitive pointers.
His desire for his son to be successful has paid off, and he believes he has the talent to be a star at the highest level with the proper people and resources in place.
An example is a race at Florida’s Volusia Speedway Park when Moyer Jr. defeated many of the top names in the dirt late model world. His father, serving as crew chief, remembers getting chills, the hair on his arms standing up and almost getting teary-eyed on the way to victory lane photographs.
“It just does something to you,” he said.
While each racer approaches working with their children differently, and age is an important factor in the parent-child relationship, there is a common theme about the best part of being a racing dad.
Simply, it’s spending time with family.