Racing cars is not an inexpensive hobby. Austin Chavez knows that all too well by now.
From the time he started racing quarter midgets at the age of 6, Chavez has loved being behind the wheel. The Bargersville resident may not have truly realized how much he loved it, though, until it was no longer an option.
When his family fell on tough times financially, racing had to wait — but Chavez, now 25 years old and sidelined since 2009, is tired of waiting. He and his younger brother Alec have, with a little guidance from a couple of the most respected names in racing, been putting together a 410 non-wing sprint car in hopes of competing again this season.
It’s been a long road back — but the journey remains incomplete.
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Click here to purchase photos from this gallery<strong>Carrying on tradition</strong>
It’s hardly an accident that Austin Chavez developed a passion for racing at such a young age. His father, Patrick, has also been involved with the sport for as long as he can recall, and as soon as his children were old enough for it, he immersed them as well.
"Back when we had the shop, they were always around that stuff and always messing with everything," Patrick said. "I guess in a way, you might say it’s in their blood.
"Once it gets in your blood, it’s hard to get out."
Austin’s late older sister, Adriana, was actually the first to begin competing in quarter midgets. The rest of Patrick’s children followed suit as they grew old enough, and before long the family was making regular weekend trips to various tracks.
Patrick bought a mobile home and had a 34-foot trailer attached to it that would house two or three quarter midget cars and whatever parts would be needed to fix them up while on the road.
"I started it for (Adriana) and for all my kids, and it was all the quarter midget stuff," Patrick recalled. "I built my own cars, and we went racing and just tried to make a family thing out of it.
"The problem is that when you do that with them at a young age, you create something that you might not be able to finish — and that’s where we’re at now."
<strong>Hard times</strong>
A familiar face in the racing world, Patrick Chavez has been working on cars for as long as he can remember, and a decade or so ago things were going pretty well for him. He had his own shop and a solid client roster that kept business going at a brisk pace.
Like many others, though, he was hit hard by the recession of the late 2000s.
"We were doing really well," Patrick said. "We mounted Funny Car bodies, and we did IndyCar suspensions. We did powder coating, we did machine work for NSK, and so we thought we had the world by the butt there for a while.
"And then next thing you know, the economy started going away, NSK decided to cut back, and all the racing stuff we did, teams were starting to fold up. So obviously, that took care of me."
Since Patrick Chavez was never using household money to fund his kids’ racing pursuits, that was one of the first things to get cut when the business went under.
Thus began the lengthy hiatus.
<strong>Comeback season</strong>
Though Austin Chavez has managed to keep himself busy over the past few years — he’s currently studying at Vincennes Aviation Technology Center in pursuit of a career working on airplanes — he hasn’t lost the desire to return to racing.
Ditto for younger brother Alec, now an 18-year-old senior at Franklin Community High School.
Last year, the two started showing up at area racetracks, hoping to once again become recognizable to people who hadn’t seen them since they were much younger.
That was all part of a bigger plan to get a car back on the track in 2017, with Austin driving and Alec working on the crew.
"We’ve just kind of been sitting on this car for a while," Austin said, "and me and my brother, we were tired of talking about it, and we decided to jump on it and get the ball rolling again."
The first part of that process has involved getting the car ready. And while Patrick Chavez has a wealth of automotive knowledge, he has largely kept himself at arm’s length from that process. He’s busy just trying to make a living — he now works at Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing in Brownsburg. But he still wanted to find a suitable mentor for his sons.
Enter Jon Stanbrough. Also based in Brownsburg, Stanbrough is a legend in the world of sprint cars. He and Patrick Chavez have known one another for roughly 25 years, and when Patrick was looking for someone to assist Austin and Alec with finishing off their car, he didn’t fully trust anyone else to do it right.
Though the Chavez boys had done a good bit of the work on the car before bringing it to Brownsburg about a year ago, Stanbrough has been indispensable.
"He has played a huge part in helping us get this car together," Austin said of Stanbrough. "We probably wouldn’t have been able to do it without him."
"He’s just been an incredible inspiration for both of my boys, and I couldn’t have picked a better person," Patrick Chavez added.
The process of finishing the car has been a long one, though — in large part because Austin and Alec haven’t had a ton of disposable income to play with. Work on the car has had to be done bit by bit as the boys could afford.
"They’ve been saving money, and then we’ll do a little bit of work on the car, and we’ll get as far as we can," Stanbrough said. "Then they’ll save a little bit more and we do a little bit more. We’re at the point right now where I actually have the car here in the shop, and we’re going to get it completely done before the season starts."
<strong>The final hurdle</strong>
Having a car ready to race is one thing. Having enough money to get it on the track and actually race it each week is another.
To race a full season at any one local track costs a driver roughly between $50,000 and $60,000 a year. Coming up with the money usually requires assistance from sponsors — which Austin and Alec Chavez don’t have yet.
"They’re learning how much it costs because they’re footing more of the bill out of their own pockets, and having to sell things," Patrick Chavez said. "Whatever they make working, they take a part of that and pay for it."
Hence the search for help in covering the expenses, which get higher and higher at each level of racing. Austin’s goal, he said, is to one day compete nationally on the USAC circuit — but he knows that’s not a realistic option at the moment. First, he and his brother need to become a known quantity in racing again.
"(USAC runs) all over the country, and that would probably take 250 to 500 thousand dollars," Austin said. "That includes trailer, truck, spare car, spare everything. And that’s what our goal is, but since we are just now getting back into the rhythm of things it’s kind of hard to gather sponsors up because we haven’t been in the game for that long."
Patrick Chavez has — but while he is offering his sons some guidance in terms of how to go about lining up sponsors, he’s not knocking down doors for them.
The best way to learn a skill, he points out, is having to do it yourself.
"You learn probably twice as much when you fail as if somebody did it all for you," Patrick said. "So could I go out there and do way more than what I’m doing right now? Absolutely, 200 percent, because I know where to go, how to do it and how to make things happen. I’ve lived it my whole life. But the end of the day, you get them pointed in a direction, they’ve got to learn."
Both Austin and Alec acknowledge that there’s still plenty more learning to do, both on the financial side and the racing side. But they’re eager to do so, and that has been apparent to those helping them out.
"One thing I’ll say about them is that they are very respectful and they listen to what you say," Stanbrough said, "so I think with that being said, they’ll learn fairly quickly. They didn’t come in here to the shop with a chip on their shoulder like they know everything."
What Austin and Alec Chavez do have is a strong desire to get the family back on the track where it belongs. The dream isn’t a reality just yet, but it’s close enough to becoming one that they can all taste it.
"We’re both excited," Austin said, "and we can see it on my dad’s face that he’s excited again."
