He begins circling the track just like he has been doing for the last three years. This will be the 63rd race in his career, and it is just like every one before it. Except something feels different. This is going to be the one. This is going to be the one where he will get his first win.
When Kyler Hefty was 10, he would ride around with his dad in the tow truck at different racetracks, ready to tow off cars that got into wrecks or couldn’t get going. Being around it all the time, he would come to love being at the race track and eventually, he would want to race himself.
In 2021 Kyler and his dad started working on his car. “If you start from scratch, you start from a [roll]cage, and that takes forever.” He would work on his car all the time in the beginning because they had to build it completely from scratch. Kyler and his dad ended up building three cars, a black car, an orange car, and a blue car. All of them are hobby stock, which means they are based on a 1986 Chevrolet Monte Carlo. He did end up selling his orange car, and currently, he is racing his black car. The blue car, however, is not complete. Right now, Kyler has it in his garage.
Before building the car, Kyler didn’t know very much about how cars work and what it would take to build one. His dad taught him anything and everything about cars. Everything that Kyler knows now is all due to his dad.
Even though they built the car together and did everything correctly, there are still things that can happen out on the race track, and it isn’t easy to race either. Kyler said that one of the worst things about racing is that sometimes, “You got dumb drivers”. He also said that those dumb drivers can, “use you as a wall.”
When asked what can go wrong while racing, he replied, “Sometimes you can bend your spindles and then you can’t turn your car, and you can bend a lot of stuff up which can ruin your race.” This basically means that bad things can happen and it could prevent you from driving your car. There is no way to predict if you are going to have a good race or if there is something that will go wrong. That is why Kyler has to have great knowledge of his car and amazing reflexes to prevent as much as he can from going wrong.
So far in his career, Kyler has been in 84 races with 52 top-10 finishes, 22 top-5s, and one win over four years. In his first year, he was just figuring out how everything worked and all of the strategies involved with racing. After this year, however, there has been a big improvement, and he keeps getting better and better. This year, for example, he was in four more races than the year before, but he has 10 more top-10s and 4 more top-5s, and of course, he also got his first win.
There is a random draw between everyone in the race to decide who gets to line up first. Kyler is lucky and he draws to be second to start. Then, everyone gets out on the track and they move into position according to where they drew. The race always starts after the leader gets past a certain point. The reason it is lucky for Kyler to be close to the front is so that he can see when the leader gets to the starting point as soon as possible and then he can start sooner. The line leader is now approaching that point and Kyler is right behind. Any second now… any… second… NOW!!
Kyler floors it, drifts, and gets past the first loop. Only 15 more to go. He maintains second throughout the race and makes it to the last lap. Kyler said, “I felt very nervous the entire time”. The guy in front of him takes a line too wide, and Kyler takes the inside line and gets past him. He has done it! He has finally won his first race!