Oliver Rowen - My Trackmagic Story
Oliver Rowen - My Trackmagic Story
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In the summer of 1997 I drove a real go kart for the first time - at Jim Hall II kart racing school in Ventura, CA. The school had some sort of 100cc single speed kart and an 80cc shifter kart. I was so out of my depth that I remember struggling to find the shift lever in the wind at 70mph. I didn't crash and if memory serves, I wasn’t too slow.
A few months later we bought a used Emmick chassis and raced Novice Sportsman at some local California tracks with a 100c Yamaha KT-100. I think it had 8hp. Because we had no idea what we were doing, I did not finish my first 7 races. I think I had 7 different mechanical failures. But I finished the 8th race and won, and won most of the subsequent races that year.
Towards the end of the year I raced Formula Y (maybe 17hp from the same Yamaha engine) and received a free chassis from Emmick! It was fun - I got to know Joey Hand who helped me learn the local tracks, raced with AJ Almemdinger and Jonathan Bomarito (both of whom were great to race with, in case anyone is wondering) and somehow won an IKF national championship in Formula Y. I say "somehow" but I actually know exactly how: I was puttering along happily in fourth place towards the end of the race and decided to pass Jonathan Bommarito for third on the last lap. Courteous as ever, he gave me plenty of room as I had good top speed at the end of the straightaway. As luck would have it, positions 1 and 2 were disqualified for various technical infractions and suddenly I was national champ about a year after my first race. It's better to be lucky than good, and I’m sure Jonathan would agree.
I knew I wanted to race shifter karts at the end of 1998, but it was a bit of a challenge. I'm fuzzy on the details, but I don't think that Emmick was willing to help much, so I ended up racing under Scott Jeffries' KLS Kart tent at the SuperNationals, which he was generous enough to offer. I also remember that I didn't know any better and I brought zero tools to the race, thinking that somebody else would bring them. Lastly, Scott Speed was their number one driver, so I just did my thing in the corner of the tent and performed so-so. I think I finished but I have no idea where.
A few months later, I was working as an instructor at a Kart racing school for Lisa Caceres, and she mentioned to me that the folks at TrackMagic wanted to have a chat. I believe I ended up on a phone call with George Barros, and he told me I should come to their shop in San Francisco for a meeting.
Soon after, I found myself in an office with George and Fausto Vitello (the most vocal of Trackmagic’s two owners), and Fausto asked me what I wanted. I said I wanted a little money and to go racing. He said "I think that sounds like a good idea. George, what do you think?" George nodded. That's kind of the way things worked at TrackMagic.
So there we go, by the end of 1998 I was an employee of TrackMagic racing, and met this dude named Jason LaPoint.
On top of being a legendary driver, Jason basically ran the race operations at the shop. He was really quiet but seemed like a good dude, and taught me important skills about trailer loading, kart maintenance, and the fundamentals of "prior proper preparation prevents piss poor performance" (which I think he passed on from his dad, Garry).
There was also this other guy, Kyle Martin, who was super fast and had recently moved out from Texas. He lived nearby and the three of us spent a lot of time hanging out together. Shortly thereafter, Ryan Pfaul materialized from Oregon. Ryan was an asshole (as was I at the time), but he was good friends with Jason and he ended up being my mechanic at many of the races.
We hated each other. But he was smart and funny, and somehow we decided it would be a good idea if we all lived together. So later that year I ended up moving in with Jason and Ryan and we had tons of fun and tons of battles together.
Kyle moved back to Texas at some point that year, but he usually flew out to California to make the drive to the races with us. Those road trips were awesome, even when we broke the truck, which definitely happened. While I was driving.
Oh yeah, the racing. Jason and I both won at the World Finals (which for some reason was near the beginning of the season) in Oklahoma in 1999. He was racing 125cc and I was racing 80cc.
In 2000 Jason moved on to the giant money pit of formula car racing, while Kyle and I both raced 125cc for TrackMagic. We had a pretty solid rivalry, with Kyle often being slightly faster in practice / qualifying, but with me usually beating him in the race (sorry not sorry).
Truthfully, we didn't have that many ontrack battles with each other; most of the time we were separated by another kart or two. I remember only one race actually, in Reno NV, where we raced with each other. If my memory is correct (which rarely happens), I chased Kyle for most of the race but could not make the pass happen even though one of us dropped a wheel at some point. Or maybe it was the other way around and I finished ahead of him. I don't remember but it was fun.
That Y2K season was the last before Scott Speed figured something out and won the next 132 consecutive races. It was a fun season with lots of different winners. Any one of the top drivers - Kyle, AJ Allmendinger, Scott Speed, Darren Elliot, Jonathan Bomarito - could win. Jason even made a cameo at Pat's Acres that year and handily spanked all of us. I think I finished second with AJ in third (?).
The season finished with the World Finals in Oklahoma. All of the drivers on the West Coast and East Coast had tallied points separately as sort of an AFC / NFC thing, with our only meeting being this double points race. I don't remember the race at all, but I do remember lending one of my carburetors to Bobby Wilson during the weekend, who eventually went on to win the race (?). Because it was such a heavy points race, he ended up winning the championship and I ended up second overall. If only I’d kept that carburetor.
Kyle, who had been at or near the front of the point standings the whole year, had some sort of mechanical failure and finished the championship way down the order, which was a bummer and not any sort of reflection of actual performance for the year.
That was my last full season racing for Trackmagic, as I moved on to try my hand in Formula Mazda in 2001. I continued to work for the parent company through 2005, focusing my energy on their "other" businesses printing money in the skateboard industry.
Over the next few years, Jason, Kyle, Ryan, and I remained friends, participating in all five weddings between the four of us. Yep, I went there. We still spend a lot of time together somehow, with frequent trips to Disneyland, random events, and generally any other excuse we can come up with to hang out.
My few years at Trackmagic were awesome - I was truly living my dream as a paid test and racing driver for a professional racing team. The friendships I made were even better though, and they'll remain for the rest of the years to come.
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