Published: Thursday, Jul. 16, 2009 / Updated: Wednesday, Jul. 15, 2009 01:42 PM
Fort Mill driver speeding up the standings in Charlotte youth racing league
FORT MILL TOWNSHIP --
Eleven-year-old Ray Beebe has turned up the heat on his summer.
For the second straight year, the Fort Mill sixth-grader is a driver in the Lowe's Motor Speedway Summer Shootout Series in Charlotte, a competition open to kids from across the country between the ages of 8 and 11.
Beebe is not content just to race in the series; he is out to win it.
After completing four races out of the 10-race schedule, Beebe is in second place in his series' standings, a national competition, just on the heels of Kyle Weatherman out of Wentzville, Mo.
“We've accomplished so much, it's just been great,” Beebe said. “We've been running hard and it's been paying off. It's so neat – I feel like I'm shooting out of a rocket.”
Beebe has won two of the series' events, including a thrilling victory against Weatherman on the final lap last Tuesday night.
Weatherman took the lead in the race with about four laps remaining, then the two racers battled back and forth during the final four laps before Beebe snuck across the finish line just in front, winning the race by a photo-finish margin of .096 seconds.
“When we were coming down the backstretch, I knew it was going to be close,” Beebe said. “I thought it was too close to call… I was so happy.”
Beebe's win cut Weatherman's lead in the series standings down to 29 points. Only one other driver out of the 43-person field is within 100 points of the top spot.
“I think one day my heart is just going to stop on its own – it's an adrenaline rush for me and my wife,” Beebe father, Raymond Beebe Sr., said about his son's intense sport. “It's 110 percent excitement, 110 percent being scared.”
In Beebe's racing category, the Bandolero Bandits, the racers speed at up to 65 mph through 14 laps of the quarter-mile track at Lowe's Motor Speedway.
The Bandolero cars, small racing cars with smaller-sized engines, roll cages and fiberglass bodies, are used by many of the youth leagues.
Beebe's father said Ray hit a wall once during a practice run – he estimates the speed at about 40-45 miles-per-hour – but he was not hurt.
“I was a little shaken up by it, but I came back and won the race later that day (in another car),” Beebe said.
Although Beebe seems a natural at the sport, it's an interest that he picked up fairly recently on his own.
“When I was younger, my dad took me to a Craftsmen truck series race and that's been my dream ever since,” he said. “To race in a racecar, to do whatever it takes to get on the track.”
Beebe recently spoke on a radio broadcast, heard by his grandparents more than 600 miles away in Memphis, and sounded like a polished professional, according to his father.
“He's turned a lot of heads and made a lot of friends on the track,” Beebe's father said. “He's really floored us.”
The competition continues at the speedway every Tuesday night until Aug. 11. Race nights also include fun events such as school bus races, crash cars and fireworks.
Races begin at 7:30 p.m.
McClatchy Interactive is pleased to be able to offer its users the opportunity to make comments and hold conversations online. However, the interactive nature of the internet makes it impracticable for our staff to monitor each and every posting.
Since MIReference.com does not control user submitted statements, we cannot promise that readers will not occasionally find offensive or inaccurate comments posted on our website. In addition, we remind anyone interested in making an online comment that responsibility for statements posted lies with the person submitting the comment, not McClatchy Interactive.
If you find a comment offensive, clicking on exclamation icon will flag the comment for review by the administrators, we are counting on the good judgment of all our readers to help us.