My Racing Ties....

So, a lot of you that follow me on Twitter may notice that I go nuts over racing. That's because I live it. I grew up in it.

I've always wanted to work in racing for a NASCAR team, but I'm not book-smart, so there's no way anyone would give me the chance. My boyfriend works in the Fab. shop for Braun racing, and he pits for USAR, ARCA, and Nationwide teams when needed changing rear tires. He's been told he belongs on a Cup team by many people. He's that good. So our lives revolve around racing because of all of this even more so now than ever. But enough about him.

My roots in racing run deep. I went to my first race when my mom was 6 months pregnant with me. My dad won that race.

My dad raced since he was 12 and lied about his age. Started doing drag racing in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, until he moved up to late models, dominating at Rockford Speedway, Madison International Speedway, Lake Geneva Raceway, and the famous Slinger Superspeedway.

He was the oldest of 4 children, and dyslexic, so he wasn't good at school, and dropped out in 6th grade to work on cars for neighbors for extra money out of his dad's garage and to watch his siblings.

He continued to race on the side of his other responsibilities when he got the chance. He couldn't tour with the ASA series, but he raced with them when they came in his neck of the woods. And he'd win. A lot. So much, that his buddy Dick Trickle made up shirts that he and Rusty, Mark, Allen, and the others would wear when they came around that read "Who the F*** is Evert DeWitt?!" because no one knew this kid who kept taking their wins away from them.

He started his Auto Repair business in the mid 80's, and also had a daughter (me) so he was a busy man, but he kept racing locally. I loved seeing my daddy race, he was my hero.

He quit for about 6 years in 1993 to build up his new storage unit business, and vacation home in the Northwoods of Wisconsin with his family, but I wouldn't quit pestering him to get back into racing. It wasn't until I was older did I learn that my dad was kind of forced out of racing by the owner of the series he raced in.

Turns out, because he had so much experience, and because he won a lot, the owner (who raced himself in the series) knew they were losing money when said owner didn't win, and my dad did. So they would find really stupid reasons to penalize him (i.e. -2 laps for parking crooked in the pits. there were no pit stalls, and this was nowhere in the rule book.). It got to the point where it was no fun for my dad to race, because they were so bad to him.

He finally got back in an Enduro car in 1999, and won the first time out. He had let me help on little things on getting the car ready and I loved it. Victory lane was never so sweet at Lake Geneva Raceway.

He raced twice in 2000, winning once, and I begged him to race in 2001 more. The death of the late great Dale Earnhardt really killed him, and he had no desire to get back into it, or even watch a race again.

The Enduro race season didn't start until Memorial Day, so I begged and begged. He said if I could put it all together (team, sponsors ect...) he'd race the season opening race. I was 14 and worked my tail off.

I had just been diagnosed as dyslexic, like my father, and went to school to classes customized just for me at this point. It was one on one, for 4 hours a day, so I had plenty of time to work with local businesses to get sponsorship.

My dad also is very well-known around Southern Wisconsin, and has a lot of friends, so it wasn't hard to find anyone who wanted to be a part of his legendary racing career.

The first race of the season rolled around, and we won it.

Then I sat the crew and driver down and we had a serious talk that next evening. By winning, we were leading the points. We had a great start to the season, and I thought we had a shot at making this championship happen. Dad again said, if I could line up sponsorship, we'd go for it.

WIth NAPA, American Credit Union, and Drake Construction on board, we went racing. We had a great season, ended up finishing 2nd in the championship (lost it by 17 points due to losing an oil line, our only DNF for the season at State Park Speedway in Wausau, Wisconsin).

We had so much fun, and did so well, we decided to come back for the 2002 season, and came out of the box strong, winning 2 of the first 4 races. We were leading points and it looked like we were going for the championship again, so the owner started working with another driver to make sure my dad didn't win. Dirty driving was this guy's specialty anyway, so he was cool with it.

He took two wins from us that year, but we were still going ok, being 6th in points. With 5 races to go. Then, Dells Motor Speedway in the Wisconsin Dells came around.

We had a large group of fans with us for that race, family that lived in the area that have never been to a race before, and were very excited.

We had brought a new car that had only been raced once, and my dad, Evert, was not happy with it. It was a rough start, falling a lap down at the small track, but about 50 laps in, the leader (series owner) spun coming off of turn 2, and my dad flew right by. Everyone in our group stood and cheered, knowing Evert had gotten his lap back.

Then the drama happened. The series' owner's wife, who is one of the worst people I've ever met, was an official, and she came running over, and hopped over the bleachers and got right in the face of my dad's aunt and yelled at her for cheering. I thought she was kidding, so I just smiled at my Great-aunt letting her know this official was kidding. Then said official, let's call her Ann (name changed for personal reasons), turned and saw me. She hated me, and we'd gotten into it a few times in the past, so she began tearing into me, saying that cheering when her husband spun was unsportsmanlike conduct and I should know better and she could have my dad thrown out for 3 races if it happened again.

I then tried to calm her down, and told her they weren't cheering 'cause her husband spun (though I was) they were cheering 'cause Evert had gotten his lap back, but she wouldn't listen and continued to go off on me.

At the end of the race, we ended up 4th, and when my dad found out what she had done, he went to the series owner and exploded. See, my dad is a little guy, but he's scary as hell when his temper comes out, and he almost got kicked out of the track for going off like he did.

Our team had lots of fans, and at the time, I was beginning to battle a very serious sickness, so I had a website for our team, and blogged about the happenings (since at times I was to sick to work on the car, I was also down to about a day of schooling a week), and when I blogged about what happened that day, our fans were outraged and refused to come to a race 'til we were back again.

The series owner knew how much money we brought to the series, so he e-mailed me with his apology and told me his wife was suspended for the next 3 races, and we would have free entry for our whole team at any one race we chose to attend.

I told my dad and team, but my dad was still so angry. He decided he refused to get in the car for those 3 races that we were threatened to be kicked out of, and let the series see how much they needed the money our fans, sponsors and team brought.

I was VERY unhappy with this, but our sponsors were in agreeance with it, so there was nothing I could do but be depressed about it and watch us fall in the points.

We came back 3 races later and were greeted with handshakes, apologies, and were very welcomed. We also began our 2nd race team that race with my father's brother driving.

We ended up 25th in points. Eww.

2003 was the dream season. Our 2nd team went full-time, going for Rookie of the Year honors. We had a new sponser, a very well-known popular country music radio station, 99.9 WJVL, and we started dabbling in a 3rd race team, my dad's 2nd cousin, Matt, in the #228.

We had multiple wins and the lowest Evert dropped in points was 4th, leading the points more than half the year. Our rookie team was quickly coming up the points standings, doing amazing for a rookie Enduro team.

The #28 of Evert DeWitt won the Championship on October 18th, 2003, on Lap 202 of 250. We won it by 51points over the runner up, who happened to be our rookie team, #128, who also took Rookie of the Year honors. Our crew-chief won the Crew chief of the Year award, our scorer for the #28 won Scorer of the Year, and I won Car Owner of the Year. Let's just say the awards banquet in Milwaukee, Wisconsin was a very sweet one that January.. Not bad for a a team ran by a girl who turned 16 December of 2003. :)

Then 2004 rolled around, and we did a race in Kalamazoo, Michigan in April, using it for a test for the upcoming season, and had to replace the motor at 7pm the night before (worked 'til 2:30am, left for the track at 6am), due to the exhaust overheating to an extreme degree, so we didn't have all the power that first engine had had, so we ended up 8th.

My illness started getting really serious, and I was working on what I could, but having a colon polyp removed with cancerous cells took me away from working on the car as much as I had used to for a little while. But I was still at every race!

We were doing really well on track, with again 2 wins in the first 5 races, and we were leading points looking to repeat our championship win.

The July 4th weekend, we raced at Grundy County Speedway in Grundy County Illinois. We were always good at that track, but a flat that night kept us a little further back in the pack than we would've liked. On the last lap, we were 3rd coming off of 4 when we were spun into the wall. Evert quickly shifter dears and got the car across the line, holding onto his 3rd position. We didn't see who had done it, but didn't think much of it.


My parents and I went to Chicago for the NASCAR weekend that next weekend (which was an off weekend for us) to celebrate my becoming healthy (yay!), and had a great time. But, when we got back, it was time to get ready for our worst track on the schedule. State Park Speedway, Wausau, Wisconsin.

Our guys worked hard to repair the damage from the Grundy race, and we had it ready in time to go up north.

Whenever we raced in Wausau, we made a weekend out of it for our crew. being an hour south of our Northwoods cabin, we had the crew and their families up for a fun weekend before the race. That day was hot, and it's such a small paperclip track, where turn 3 gets very narrow suddenly, it's just an aggressive track. No one was excited for this race. Little did we know how bad of a day this was going to be.

We started mid-pack (our series didn't have qualifying, it was first-come-first-serve starting spot) and Evert quickly made his way up to 4th. Then it happened. 17 laps into it, a car was on the inside of Evert going into 3, and he drove his car straight into the left front tire, and slammed the car into the outside wall. My dad's care was toast. He was trying to get the tow truck to push it into the pits, but the driver of the jam truck was told not to, and to leave the car on the track.

(It's a series rule to leave the car on the track if the driver can't drive it off the track, but he could've with help, which was aloud in the rules. Remember, they hate my dad...)

So, my dad stalked to the infield pits, and began yelling at officials to get his car off the track. Evert knew he was done for the day, but he didn't want the car to get hurt anymore than it already was. It's like he knew what was coming. The first lap back to green, the driver who'd put him in the wall, drilled the car again, almost going through the rear window, totaling the rear end. My dad was so angry, this was obviously intentional, my dad wanted to throw a tire iron through the guy's windshield, and I was irate yelling at the officials about this dirty driving. But, as the owner of the team, I had to take care of business, and that meant getting my driver out of there before he did something really bad.

We got him in the family car and we left, and I left instructions for them to get a hold of me if anything happend, or they needed anything. We were back at the cabin in time to see the end of the NASCAR Truck race and all four of it's green, white, checkered finishes.

I got a call from the crewcheif, later, saying that 153 laps into the race, the same guy did the same thing to my other team. I knew this guy was out for blood, but it was someone we didn't know, a nobody, so we needed to find out why. I put my detective hat on and went to work. As soon as we got home from the cabin.

I finally say my cars for the first time up close Monday with all their damage. Saying I was in SHOCK was an understatement. The roll cage of the #28 broke. The damage was half an inch from destroying the gas tank. There was no left-rear quarter-pannel. The damage on the #128 was more internal but both cars were destroyed and would take more time to repair than we had before the next week's race.

Both of my drivers had bruises from their 5-point harnesses, and were very sore all over to the point where they could barley move. Something had to be done.

I contacted the series owner about this person, and included the pictures of the damage he'd caused to our cars, but he was very un-sympathetic. We talked to the only official who was honest with us, and he informed me on the reason my cars were destroyed and my drivers were hurting.

Turns out since it was looking like we were going to repeat in the championship, and we kept taking all of the series' money from the owner (they saved money when he won...) so the owner found a frustrated rookie who no one knew, and paid him off to wreck my cars and injure my drivers, so we'd be forced to miss at least one race, which would definitely take us out of the championship race. The guy had tried in Grundy, but never got a clear shot, so he'd been the one to spin us that week before.... I had a decision to make.

My dad didn't want to race anymore if this was going to be the case. He told me he wanted to, but we couldn't keep wrecking this bad every week, if that was their plan to continue going after us. So, we sat the crew down, and thanked them for all their time and hard work, but we were pulling the plug on the race teams. I couldn't put my drivers in danger. The sponsors were very sympathetic and understanding, and we covered the cars one last time, and put them back in the weeds at the shop, where they stayed until they were sold in 2005.

After we quit racing, I started running my father's storage unit business and worked in his Auto Repair as a Secretary and Auto Tech Assistant in September 2004 graduated with my HSED (High School Equivalency Diploma) in December 2004. I Worked at the Auto Repair until we closed the doors in April 2005.

September of 2005, I started Cosmetology School, to graduate in December 2006, and in March of 02006, I moved to North Carolina, sight unseen, just to be around racing. It's who I am. I just wanted to be around it.

So, that's the long story about why racing is so important in my life. I hope you enjoyed it, I know I did... :)