King of racing, local teen works to compete in the big leagues

Michael King Jr. sits in the car he and his father are working on fixing for the next racing season. He's moving up next season from a using a street car to a NASCAR grade car. Michael Shine/News-Times

For Michael King Jr. a dream is finally coming true with the purchase of his first true racing car.

King, a senior at Smackover High School, has been dreaming of dirt racing for as long as he can remember. He started to train as young as he could and has just come off of 14 wins during his first season of racing.

“Whenever I’m putting the helmet on and getting buckled in and everything sitting in staging, I get really really nervous,” King said. “I don’t know if everybody does, but I get nervous just sitting there thinking about it. But when you turn the engine on, and the moment you hit the track and you see the track when you’re coming over the hill from the pit, it’s like everything vanishes and you’re just thinking about one thing, to win the race. It’s a really weird thing to go from a shaking mess to determined to win the race.”

King can remember being young and spending time down in the pit, watching his father, Michael King Sr., race. That lasted until he was about 10, when his father stopped racing.

“I was kind of born into it and I got addicted from the time I was little” he said. “I’ve always loved the driving side. I got my first four-wheeler when I was about four and was tearing up my grandparent’s yard. I got a go cart and drove it around their yard for years.”

When King got a little bit older, he would sit with his father playing NASCAR games on the PS2.

“I would hold the gas because I wasn’t old enough to be able to steer,” King said. “He would steer and I would hold the gas and it just started like that. Every time we’d go out of town and there was a go cart track, I’d be going ‘Let’s go drive go carts, let’s go.’”

King got a racing simulator about four years ago, which is built like a video game but designed to help those looking to get into racing practice before actually hitting the track. The program is one that’s similar to the ones that professional racers will train and practice on since it simulates factors such as fuel usage, damage, tire wear, grip and suspension settings.

He started working with the simulator before he had his license and has continued to since starting on the actual track.

“You wouldn’t think a video game could make it so realistic, but iRacing put out asphalt racing, like NASCAR, but I think it was last year they added dirt,” King said. “I personally love dirt racing more because with asphalt you have one line, but with dirt the line changes.”

King said the night starts with everybody driving backwards to pack the track’s dirt. Then they start with hot laps, which are practice laps to make sure that everything’s working correctly, before getting into heat races. Heat races serve as qualifying races for the feature race. King said that by the time the feature race happens, the dirt track is normally black from the rubber, which makes it feel like driving on ice.

King drove two different street cars over the course of the season. The first, was totalled during a race when one of the other drivers cut him off and he ended up going front end first into a wall.

“There’s one night I was racing at BootHill Speedway and I was racing for the lead,” King said. “I passed the guy and he didn’t take it very well. He came down and turned me head up into the concrete barrier. It was about 75 miles per hour into a concrete wall and I don’t know if it would have shattered my knee cap, but I couldn’t walk right for about two weeks. I had a gash down my leg. This is the most dangerous sport in the world because people die in this kind of stuff all the time. It kind of scared all of us.”

That was what got King really looking into and focusing on safety measures he could take within the car and his equipment to minimize the damage of an impact.

The first two cars King drove were regular street cars, but the new one he’s working on building for the next racing season has more harnesses. The seat includes a harness that goes between his legs, one that goes around his waist and one that straps across his chest. The closest comparison to the harnesses King could think of are the ones used on some roller coaster seats. Additionally, King has a helmet that includes supports for his neck to avoid whiplash on impact, which is similar to what NASCAR drivers are required to wear.

“I feel that safety is a really big deal, to me at least,” King said. “Your car has got to be safe for everybody, not just for you. You’ve got other people out there too. If you have something halfway done on your car and that part breaks, you have a wheel fall off in the middle of a race track where cars are going 100 miles per hour and somebody hits that, that could kill somebody. I see the safety, it needs to take a bigger role in my opinion, it’s not as important as it needs to be. Everybody’s more concerned with winning than the safety.”

The new car, which is an original race car that King and his father are working to rebuild, is a stock car like the ones used by NASCAR drivers. This is a step up to limited modified. The two are replacing the motor, drive shaft, transmission, and shots with the repairs costing around $20,000.

Michael said it should be fixed up for his son to start practicing in by the end of January.

“It’s a very rewarding hobby, but it’s a lot of work,” King said. “It’s my hobby, but it’s not a very cheap hobby.”

Designing a car is a family project with father and son working on the car itself and King’s mother, Leslie, being in charge of the design and decals, which change throughout the season. For instance, King drove at the Timberlane Speedway’s Spooky Race at the end of October, which his mother illustrated in purple with ghosts and black cat decals to get into the spooky theme.

King said that being located in El Dorado is convenient because its close to a midway point from surrounding tracks, which means that they can travel to a variety of tracks. Over the last season, King raced on six different tracks around Arkansas and Louisiana.

“We’re just kind of right in the middle of all these different tracks,” King said.

In many ways, finally being able to race is a dream come true for King and the new car is the next step in that dream. He said that his goal is to be able to make a living dirt racing. One of the ways that he’s working toward making it a profession is looking for sponsors.

“This is actually what I’ve wanted to drive since I was born,” King said. “When we were at the race track, I wouldn’t pay attention to anything, I had my little cars that I would play with, until the modifieds came out, which is what I’m driving. That’s what I would always pay attention to. That’s what I told him I wanted to drive and now I’m finally getting to after 18 years.”