From the Lee Motorsports archives • Chapter 1

Before there was a drag truck, a rear-engine dragster, or Lee Motorsports, there was a kid watching sprint cars sling dirt and wondering how all that horsepower worked. My racing story started with family, a limited budget, and a curiosity that never let up.

Our weekends revolved around racing

I grew up in a family where racing was part of life. My parents and their friends were big dirt-track fans, especially when sprint cars were on the schedule. If a show was within driving distance, there was a good chance we were headed there. Sometimes we watched from the stands. Sometimes we spent time in the pits. Either way, I wanted to be close to the cars.

As a kid, the sound and movement grabbed me first. Sprint cars tearing through the dirt had a way of holding my attention that nothing else could. I could feel the engines in my chest, and I wanted to understand what made those machines do what they did. Watching a race was exciting. Getting close enough to study a race car was just as interesting.

Those trips also made racing feel like a community. My connection to the sport grew through the people around it: family, friends, and the racers we spent time with. Long before I had a car of my own, I felt like I belonged at a racetrack.

A racing family on a real-world budget

Loving racing and being able to afford a race car are two different things. My dad ran a small business, and my mom was a high-school teacher. There were responsibilities to handle, and racing money did not appear just because we wanted it to.

We participated however we could. We were fans, helpers, and sometimes honorary pit crew. That was enough to keep us involved, and it gave me a chance to watch and learn. I did not have to own a car to see how much effort went into getting one ready or how much the people around a racer mattered.

Looking back, that limited budget taught me patience. It also taught me to appreciate the work behind the racing. The car on the track was the exciting part, but there was a lot to learn from everything that happened around it. I was getting an education without realizing it.

Dad helped me understand what made things work

My interest in machinery followed me home. Engines, gears, electronics, and anything with moving parts drew me in. I wanted to take things apart so I could understand them. The goal was to figure them out, even when my enthusiasm got ahead of my knowledge.

My dad encouraged that curiosity. He was an electronics and automotive-electronics instructor, and he could explain the things I was trying to understand. He would sit with me and talk through a circuit, an engine’s behavior, or the way one mechanical part worked with another.

Those hands-on lessons often happened after dinner. They were ordinary moments at the time, but they had a lasting effect. Dad helped me see a machine as a collection of parts with jobs to do and relationships to understand. If something did not work, there was a reason. Finding that reason took observation, patience, and a willingness to keep learning.

That approach stayed with me. It helped turn a childhood fascination with race cars into an interest in building, fixing, and improving them.

The dream outlasted childhood

I wanted to get behind the wheel myself. I imagined strapping into a race car and being the person making the run instead of watching it. There was no complete plan, and there certainly was not an unlimited budget. There was simply a dream that kept coming back.

As I grew older, life brought responsibilities and other demands on my time. The interest never disappeared. I still wanted to be around engines. I still wanted to understand how things worked. And I still wanted a chance to race.

Those early years gave me more than memories of sprint cars. They taught me to learn by watching, respect the sport, value hard work, and keep moving toward a goal even when I could not afford to reach it right away. Those lessons would matter through the building, learning, mistakes, and successes that came later.

Where the next chapter begins

Lee Motorsports grew out of that foundation. The racing and the business came later, but the curiosity started early. The family trips, the dirt-track weekends, and the time learning from my dad all helped shape the person I became.

Sprint cars started the fascination. A later trip to an NHRA national event would give it a new direction. By then I was working, raising a family, and still finding ways to stay close to racing. I went to that event as a fan. I left knowing I wanted to do more than watch.

Continue the story: Chapter 2 — The NHRA Day That Hooked Me on Drag Racing.

Explore more Lee Motorsports history.