These days, it seems that F1 is raced exclusively by genetically engineered, corporately sponsored, superhumans. Look at Lewis Hamilton and tell me he wasn’t designed in a lab in some sub-basement of McLaren. All of the top tier boys got a Nomex onesie before they could walk, and their stroller had a HANS device. The ones who are more human come from the families with the sort of money to make Scrooge McDuck blush. In this rarefied world, where the cost of auto racing is higher than ever, is there any place for the amateur privateer?

Turns out, there is, but it’s not at Silverstone. It’s an hour outside of Colorado Springs, on the side of an innocuous mountain named after a 19th century Army captain. At Pike’s Peak, Wil Kitchens, a man with admittedly little auto racing experience, ran his home-built car against the best that man and nature could bring to bear. Time trials are one of the purest forms of motor racing, in my opinion. There is no pit strategy. There is no fighting your way through traffic. There are no caution laps. You simply run as hard as you can, and hope you and your vehicle are both still in one piece by the time you finish.

I sat down with Wil, and conducted an interview via assorted electronic correspondence, to find out what goes into a mechanic from Texas entering one of the oldest motor races in the world, with a car he scavenged from Craigslist. This is a long one, so buckle in.

Andrew Fails: Ok, so first things first, what is the car?

Wil Kitchens: It’s a 1998 BMW E36 M3 sedan.

AF: What shape was it when you got it?

WK: In a word, ‘sad,’ haha. When I got it, it had been sitting in the back lot of a local BMW dealership for quite some time in sad shape – it had been stripped of anything and everything of value, so there was no engine, transmission, wiring harness, radiator, etc; the suspension and wheels on it were the bare-bones essentials to allow it to be rolled around. My understanding was that the tech who was selling it was on the verge of just scrapping it when I contacted him.

AF: Was the goal to build a racecar when you got it?

WK: Absolutely! I’d been roadracing motorcycles with the CMRA for a handful of years when my good friend and fellow racer Mark Niemi turned me on to the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb in mid-2011. I opted to bring an Aprilia SXV to race there the following year, and despite doing extensive testing and preparation prior to race week much of my time during practice was spent fixing broken things on the bike (commonly referred to as ‘normal’ to those familiar with Aprilia SXV’s); since Pikes Peak practice is done on the mountain in the wee hours of the morning before the road opens up to tourists, and there’s only one way up and down the mountain, unless you’re practicing on the bottom section you aren’t able to get back down off the mountain until practice is over – so a mechanical during middle or top section practice without having the necessary parts to facilitate a repair means you get to sit there and wait until race direction lets you back down off the mountain until you can do anything. Because of this, when the bike broke during middle section and top section practice, we walked down to the section below us to watch the cars finish their runs. I’d seen cars race before, but never anything like these insane machines that came screaming around the last few hairpins of their practice sections. That’s what planted the seed.

We returned to Pikes Peak in 2013 so that Ryan Warren, a good friend of mine who also races motorcycles and who’d been part of my support team for Pikes Peak in 2012, could race his Triumph at the Hill Climb. The first night we were there, we had more than a few drinks at the host hotel bar following the rider and driver’s meetings, and the alcohol persuaded me to get on Craigslist to find something to race up the mountain. That was where and when I found the battered and left-for-dead M3 for $600. I immediately contacted the seller and a friend of mine that had a tow truck, and set it up so that when I got back from Colorado the following week the M3 would be sitting at my shop waiting for me.



(Photo by Eric Carney)

AF: Was the time on the bike your first time running at Pikes Peak?

WK: Yup! At that time Pikes Peak had just been fully paved, so it appealed much more to me than it had in previous years when there had been dirt sections (I’ve had practically zero experience on dirt, ever – it’s just never really been my gig). With it being the first year fully paved, I was hoping to sort of get a jump on any other roadracers who, like me, hadn’t had any interest in racing on dirt, and would certainly start coming out to the Peak soon.

AF: So what is your motorcycle racing experience?

WK: Well, I got my first motorcycle in late 2005, crashed that over and over on the street until I decided I wanted to try trackdays in 2008, did a handful of trackdays – literally, like four – and then decided that since there weren’t winners or trophies at trackdays that I was ready to race. My first year racing was 2009, when I raced a Kawasaki 636 in both the Central Motorcycle Roadracing Association (CMRA) Big Bike Sprint Series and the CMRA Big Bike Endurance Series, the latter of which where IDB Racing got its start. I crashed my way through my freshman year of sprint racing, but we somehow managed to wind up third overall in class for the year in what would wind up being the premiere CMRA Big Bike Endurance class. I came back the following year with a really old and even more outclassed bike that I got for dirt cheap (see a pattern here?), a 1991 Honda Hawk, came out and won the first race of the day of the first event of the year on it in the rain at Texas World Speedway, and went on to win the overall championship in the Clubman class, and finished top three overall in the other two classes I raced that year (Classic and Formula 2). I think I managed to get on the podium at least once in every race weekend that year, and won 3 or 4 races that year. I came back the following year with the same bike with a ton more development and gobs more horsepower, and at the first race of 2011 I finished in second place in what was at the time the most intense race I’d ever ridden, after battling back and forth with my biggest rival from the previous year. He was a much better rider than me but I was on a much faster bike (fast is relative in this scenario), and we spent the entire race bumping elbows and going back and forth, until coming onto the straightaway finishing the penultimate lap he got himself in a crazy headshake that almost put him straight into the pit wall…like an idiot I let off the throttle to watch the bike that was inches away from me moments ago head full-speed-wonky into the wall, and about that time he regained control and we kinda looked at each other, and he got back on the gas first. I couldn’t manage to get back around him that lap, and he beat me back around to the line by fractions of a second. The next round I blew the bike up, decided that bike sucked and I should race something else, so in early 2011 I sold the Hawk and bought the bike that a few months later I traded for the Aprilia that I raced at Pikes Peak the following year, and now here I am. Honestly, had it not been for the CMRA, I absolutely would not have wound up where I am today. Hey, that rhymed!

AF: What all auto experience did you have?

WK: As far as racing goes, I had very very little prior experience driving. I actually had some issues getting my car entry accepted by PPIHC, as it was initially declined because of my minimal experience – which is understandable really, I wouldn’t want to see someone injure or kill themselves or any spectators because they lacked the proper discipline to pilot a race vehicle up that mountain. Lucikly, the folks at PPIHC are reasonable and understanding, and upon my providing them with a much more detail-oriented write-up of my racing history as well as agreeing to attend pre-race-week practice to allow them to assess my performance and capabilities, I was given the green light to come participate in the race. Outside of driving, though, I’ve got a long history with auto racing – for the last several years I’ve worked on and built high-end high-performance automobiles and race cars, and following the 2012 race and the realization that “Yup, this is something that I’m gonna make hapen,” I quit the facility I’d been working at in order to open my own shop doing that same sort of work, and focus more on Pikes Peak and other Time Attack type races.

AF: So how many years have you run the M3 at Pikes?

WK: Two. We built the car during the last half of 2013 and first few months of 2014, raced it at the 2014 event, and then added the supercharger and better aero for 2015.



(Photo by Brandon LaJoie ( www.brandonlajoie.com ) )

AF: So if the supercharger was added later, what has the progression of the build been?

WK: Well, as mentioned previously I pretty much started off with a bare chassis. That first year when we initially built the car, I reached out to several companies to get parts and sponsorship for the car. It was a little easier to convince myself to go ahead and go all-out on the car, because half the stuff that I would’ve otherwise been on the fence about replacing or upgrading wasn’t even there, haha. Ground Control hooked me up with every part they made for the car, UltraShield practically gave me all of the safety gear I needed both for me and the car, Brooks Motorsport dropped what they were doing to get the car set up with the proper wing that it needed, and several other companies came through with stuff we needed. Several of my friends helped out, and we worked pretty much all night every night and all weekend every weekend – basically any spare time we could find outside of business hours and working on customer cars – to get the car together. We stripped what was left of the car, seam welded every seam we could find, boxed in the subframes, and tried to do all the little nit-picky stuff that often got overlooked on other builds I’d seen – this was made SO much easier by us starting with bare bones. As luck would have it, a wadded-up M3 of the same year and color showed up at the Euro salvage yard that I frequently do business with, so I was able to get most of the non-aftermarket stuff I needed from that – engine, transmission, wiring, DME, differential, driveshaft, and so on. It was crazy, the only panels not damaged on that donor car were the ones that WERE damaged on the race car, so we were able to make use of those as well. There have been countless times during this whole ordeal that, for no apparent reason, things have just kinda seemed to fall into place at the last minute for me. We got the car together in early 2014, and started taking it to local tracks to do testing and tuning and iron out any kinks. I was even more broke at that point than I’d been thus far in the saga, so all of our track time was limited to “when we could mooch free track time off of someone that worked at a track or had a membership we could drive on.” One of those days I got tangled up with some street cars, and managed to do a second-third-second ‘money shift’ while trying to get around a Mustang cleanly (video:https://youtu.be/JG5YlK6r9mY?t=2m49s ) , and bent some valves and shattered some pistons in the process. This was a HUGE hit, as it was right around the corner from when we were supposed to head to Colorado for the first weekend of sanctioned practice, and I was COMPLETELY out of money. I sold everything I could find to sell, and got in touch with MVP Motorsports and begged them to help out with engine parts, and those guys came through like I absolutely would have never expected them to – in a matter of days I had new rods, pistons, bearings, ARP hardware all around, valves…everything I needed. Luckily, building race engines is something that I’m VERY experienced at, so I was able to get everything back up and running in no time. Jerry at Eurocharged here in Houston got me fixed up with the proper tuning to run the aftermarket engine internals, and we were back on track for Pikes Peak!

I knew early on in testing that I was going to need more power to have ANY hopes of being competitive, and at the time sort of touted a pipe dream that “We’re just here with an NA setup so we can get the chassis dialed in, and then we’re coming back next year with boost!” I never in my wildest dreams thought that would actually happen – but, as mentioned before, things have had a funny way of falling into place for me. I sent out email after email after email to everyone I could think of who made turbo setups for BMW’s, with no responses whatsoever. It was a bit later, I want to say sometime in November or December, that I got a late-night voicemail from Karl Hugh at Active Autowerke requesting that I give him a call back at my earliest convenience, and the next thing I knew Active was putting together a custom setup for my car for me. Active set me up with a C38-92 Rotrex supercharger, which was the largest frame blower we could fit on the car, and all of the other necessities to bolt it all on the car. It was crazy, I think it took us a whole 5 hours to bolt everything on the car. Jordan at RK Tunes worked with us over a few months, emailing me tunes so that I could load them and log data whenever I could get dyno time, and we ended up traveling to Colorado with a VERY strong package.

For 2015 I also stepped my aero game up substantially; in 2014 I built a full undercar aero package out of ABS plastic, but a rookie mistake during qualifying in 2014 put the car off the track and destroyed all of the aero minus the wing. That sucked, since it was my first year there in a car and I was already under scrutiny by race direction, I was required to complete at least one run on each practice section during the week in order to compete in the race – my incident was during the first session of qualifying, when I got hot-footed and decided to push harder than I should on a cold, damp, early-morning track, so we ended up basically ripping off everything that was flopping around and making my qualifying run with the car looking pretty similar to how it had when I first bought it. I knew that I needed something less ‘homemade’ in the aero department for 2015, and Brooks Motorsport came through again – we spent the first few days in Colorado at Brooks Motorsport headquarters, where Cody (owner of Brooks) helped us install an incredible carbon fiber flat bottom, diffuser, side skirts, air dam, and splitter that he’d spent the previous few weeks making for me.



(Photo by Wil Kitchens)

AF: Was the aero done out of necessity? What did you learn from 2014 that you applied to 2015?

WK: Absolutely. I knew early on we were going to have to have some seriously functional aero to give us any edge up against the other better-funded cars, and up until I destroyed our ABS stuff in 2014 it was VERY obvious that it was working – I think I was running 6th in class in practice with the NA motor before I crashed and broke everything. Although I didn’t crash this year, I knew that carbon fiber components would hold up much better to any impacts than the shatter-prone ABS had been. Cody also was able to take the design elements from the previous year and put them in his computer and verify what was working and what wasn’t, so we were able to fine-tune everything that way. We ended up with an incredibly efficient and functional aerodynamic package on the car, that had all of the components working together properly.

AF: How did you do your research? Online, talking to other racers, etc?

WK: I spent a TON of time back in 2013 and 2014 reading and researching as much as I could about race car aerodynamics. I looked at cars such as the BMW’s of the late great Georg Plasa and Formula 1 and LeMans cars from the 80’s and 90’s, when aerodynamics started kind of becoming a big deal, and upon spending months collecting data I kind of started getting an idea of what works versus what looks fancy. I was hesitant to just copy someone else’s design, because I had suspicions that a lot of what’s out there outside of bajillion-dollar programs were likely more ‘fancy lookin’ than ‘functional’, and I didn’t want to be another racer that just looked at pictures of other race cars and made mine look like those. I really didn’t talk to other racers much in this regard, because on one hand I wasn’t entirely sure they’d be willing to just say “Sure, here’s the findings from all of our time, research, effort, and money,” especially if they’d come up with something that worked; and on the other hand because I didn’t want to have the opposite effect, and accidentally give away something that I may have discovered worked, hah. Cody took all that and put it in his fancy computer, and we figured out what kinks we needed to iron out from there. I’m not entirely sure how many guys that I compete against have 3D-rendered CFD versions of their cars that they used to verify the aero they’re using, but I’d be willing to bet the answer to that is “not that many of them.”

AF: You mentioned you had helped build/prep racecars before. How much of that translated to Pikes?

WK: All of it! Having seen where others had skimped out or cut corners before and having been able to see the results of that was monumental – there were some things that are commonplace on race car builds that I knew were absolutely non-essential, and other things that the majority of racers skip that were really needed, so I was more or less able to get everything ‘right’ on the first shot. Being able to build the entire car myself with the help of my friends – who, as it so happens, are also experienced technicians and mechanics – gave us a thorough understanding of where and what everything on the car was, and if something wasn’t working right or was about to break or whatever we could pretty much nip it in the bud immediately. There’s also something reassuring in sitting in a race car preparing to careen up the side of a mountain while knowing that every last nut and bolt around you were put together properly – I won’t name any names, but I don’t recall a single time I’ve been to a race even that I haven’t heard “I paid so-and-so to build this car, and it isn’t right and it isn’t working and we’re here at the race and are just about out of luck at this point!” I have equal amounts of envy and pity for drivers who didn’t build what they’re driving, haha. That’s not to say that we didn’t have things break though – it’s still a race car getting the absolute snot beat out of it practically 100% of the time it’s switched on – this was where having years of experience with the type of vehicle I raced helped out the most.

AF: So did you have a lot of things break? How did the races go?

WK: I wouldn’t say that we had a LOT of things break…I mean, when you’re squeezing every last drop out of a car, stuff’s going to wear out and fail, that’s just how it is. I’ve always hated showing up to the races and seeing other teams in the pits still adjusting suspension, or tuning their cars, or making setup changes, and so on…that’s what testing is for! Sure, stuff breaks, but in my opinion there is never an excuse for showing up to an event with things still needing to be done on the car, ESPECIALLY since there’s always a good chance you’re going to break more stuff. Despite taking what we deemed to be every possible preemptive measure beforehand, our two major failures turned out to be two of the VERY few remaining ‘original’ parts on the car – the harmonic balancer and the power steering pressure line. We’d been having issues with the supercharger belt slipping all week that later turned out to be caused by a failing ten-year-old balancer, and during qualifying I popped the power steering pressure hose and only got one qualifying run. Remember how I mentioned that the previous year I went out and wadded the car up the first run of qualifying? I can’t count how many times I had someone come up to me and say “Hey, remember, don’t go out there and crash your first run again! Take it easy!” I did that and the damn car ended up breaking on that first run, and ended up qualifying at the back of the field. That turned around and bit me in the hind-end on race day, when halfway through the day the skies opened up and ruined the course with ice, snow, and water, and left the second half of the field only able to make a wet run to the halfway point on the mountain. I ended up running the race with all-season tires on front and cut slicks on the back, but still managed to beat my personal best on the bottom section and finish 11th in class. That may not sound like much on its own, but that was the first time I’d ever run on a wet course, and my personal best had been set the year previous in the dry. On top of that, tenth place was the only car in my class that finished ahead of me on the wet course (1st through 9th got dry runs up the full mountain), and I was only behind him by just over a tenth of a second – and on top of being an INSANELY talented driver, he’s raced Pikes Peak every year for like, the last ten years or something. So at the end of the day with all things taken into consideration, I’m happy enough with where I wound up on race day. Heck, to be honest, with the condition the balancer was in after the race run (I barely made it back down the mountain following the race), the car probably wouldn’t have even made it much further up the mountain than it did – so in that aspect, I came out smelling like roses!



(Photo by Wil Kitchens)

AF: You said you finished 11th in class. How many were in your class?

WK: There were 22 cars that started the race in my class, and out of that four DNF’d. I believe there were a few more that entered but weren’t able to start the race for various reasons. I was 35th out of 71 overall, too – out of those cars that ran the wet course, only seven finished ahead of me. Not what I wanted – but, all things considered, I’ll chalk that up under the ‘not too shabby’ category.

AF: How was Pikes Peak?

WK: Absolutely incredible. I spend fifty-one weeks out of the year looking forward to that one week in June, and despite the hiccups Pikes Peak never disappoints. I get to do race car shit all week, see some of the most amazing countryside there is to see, watch the sun rise from on top of the clouds, hang out with some of the most amazing people on the planet, and I get to haul as much ass as I dare up one of the scariest and most intense stretches of pavement on the planet. 10/10 would recommend.

AF: How was it different from racing a bike there?

WK: To put it in a nutshell, crashing in a car was WAY scarier and hurt WAY less. Being on-course in inclement weather is much nicer in a car, too…in 2012, returning down from practice was atrocious – practice gets run from sun-up at like 4:30-5am until 8:30 or 9 (which is when they open the mountain up for tourists), so while you’re all ‘in the zone’ and pushing it to the limit and whatnot on your way up, coming back down is basically a game of “I hope my fingers don’t freeze and fall off.” In a car, however…not so much. Then, in 2012 – much like this year – about halfway through race day it started snowing and such on top of the mountain, and got all cold and icey and such, and the race got cut in half…only that time, I was already at the top of the mountain. I made it two turns down from the top before the ol’ trusty Aprilia motor stuck, and I had to abandon ship and leave the bike on the side of the mountain and ride nut-to-butt on the back of Craig Gleason’s Yamaha the rest of the way down….and in the car, I’m…well, I’m in the car. It’s got windows and stuff, so that’s nice. The car was also a lot nicer for getting up and down the mountain for practice – it’s ‘street legal’ and has lights and valid plates/tags/inspection/insurance, so I just drive it to and from the motel we stay at up the mountain for practice and back down, and don’t have to bother with loading and unloading on and off a trailer and such. It does present a bit of a conundrum when the car breaks up on the mountain, but at least it’s a downhill roll back to the motel!

AF: What types of racecars had you built prior to this? Just Pikes Peak, or other stuff as well?

WK: This is actually the first Pikes Peak car I’ve built. Since I built this, I’ve done a bit of work on some other Pikes Peak and hill climb / time attack racers; however, the majority of my experience has been with road racing (NASA, SCCA), standing mile/top speed type cars, and drag racers.

AF: How much do you have invested into the car?

WK: Oh man, I have no idea…I know there was close to 900-1000 hours in it last time I added everything up…dollar wise though, I’ve got no idea. I imagine if I added everything up to the penny, I would probably regret doing so! Only thing I know for sure is, thanks to the support of all of my wonderful sponsors, I’m MUCH less out of pocket on the whole project than I would’ve been otherwise – so that’s a plus. I know when I initially started putting numbers together it was looking like $65-70k all said and done, but that was also the initial list of what I wanted to do and thought I’d end up doing at non-sponsorship and non-wholesale pricing, and I’ve ended up doing a lot more than initially intended, so it’s hard to say. “Everything.” That’s the good answer. I’ve got everything invested into the car.

AF: So did you do all the work yourself?

WK: Not all of it, a good deal of it. I’ve had several friends help out along the way in various ways – as mentioned earlier, I’ve got the benefit of having been in the car fixin’ scene for right at a decade, so the majority of my friends are either extremely talented and skilled technicians and mechanics, or are at least fairly well-versed in mechanicals and race-car’in. A lot of them have taken time off the last few years to come up with me to Colorado as well, both for practice and testing and for the race week. And then, even more of them have helped to secure sponsorships and donations, help get me track time, provide me with parts I needed but couldn’t afford at the time, etc…I get how every story like this always comes through with a little help from the friends, but I seriously feel like I’ve go the absolute greatest group of people surrounding me and helping me make this happen. For instance, when I blew the power steering line this year during practice, I was barely even out of the car and out of my safety gear, and everyone had the car jacked up and the front end pulled apart already…and later that day while I was driving all over Colorado trying to find what turned out to be apparently the last remaining E36 M3 power steering line on the planet, everyone else was back at the motel not only getting everything done that they possibly could on the car, but they’d gone into town and got food and started cooking fajitas as well. By the time I made it back to the motel, not only did they pretty much have the car as back-on-track as possible, but they had food ready for me too. This is all during Pikes Peak Race Week, which with having to wake up at 2am every day to get up on the mountain (among other things) HAS to be one of the most strenuous and nerve-wracking weeks any racer or crew will ever experience. I don’t know that for sure, I’m just assuming that, but the one thing I am sure about is that I’ve got the absolute most awesome group of friends out there, and if I had the choice of competing in an event like this with a multimillion-dollar pit crew versus ‘my buddies that came out here with me in exchange for beer,’ I’d pick the latter. Especially since they’re the ones that usually bought the beer.



(Photo by Wil Kitchens)

AF: And how long did it take from when you bought the car until it was ready to run the first year?

WK: Let’s see…I got back to Texas the first of July in 2013, and then our first day on the track was March 17th…so, for us to get it actually on-track and raceable was just over 9 months.

AF: What’s the name of your shop?

WK: IDB Racing

AF: Does that stand for In Da Butt?

WK: Hah, not anymore. We initially came up with IDB Racing as a joke back in 2009 when I was racing motorcycles and we were required to have a team name for the endurance series we were running, and my sense of humor hadn’t quite matured yet (not that it has now). I kept the IDB Racing name going after I opened my shop, as it already had some racing lineage to it, but came up with something a bit more professional for the ‘real’ shop – Inspire, Design, Build. Admittedly, it took quite a while to come up with something for those initials, but I think it has a nice ring to it.

AF: Has the car been entered into any other events?

WK: Only one, the MSR Houston Charities race in August of 2014. We got back from Pikes Peak that year and I don’t think we even changed the oil before we took it to that race – the car overheated really badly during the 2014 race, and the whole 2014 Pikes Peak experience was pretty frustrating, and the charity race was only a few weeks after we got back to Texas. I was kinda of the “Screw this car, if it blows up it blows up” mentality at that point, so I didn’t even change the oil before we took it to that race. The car did great that day, and shortly after that was when I started trying to find someone to give me some boost makin’ parts…heck, actually, now that I think about it, I didn’t even change the oil when I first put the supercharger on…we blew the motor, rebuilt it for Pikes Peak, overheated the piss out of it at Pikes Peak, brought it back and raced it here in Texas, bolted on a supercharger and threw down 468whp on the first base map pull, and only THEN did I finally change the oil. Still haven’t pulled that motor apart, even after running this year. Motor’s built strong, haha.



(Photo by Wil Kitchens)

AF: What is up next for the car in terms of events, or modifications?

WK: I’m going to take it to Global Time Attack in New Orleans in October and run the Unlimited class with the big dogs, and if I do well in that event I plan on taking it to the following GTA race at Buttonwillow in November. Budget is going to be super tight by then though, so finances may keep me from making it to Buttonwillow, but we’ll see. As far as modifications I’ve got an ATI harmonic balancer that will hopefully be the end of all of my balancer-and-belt-slip woes, and we’ve got a set of Allstar Performance air jacks that I’m going to get on before NOLA. That’s pretty much it for the car, as far as modifications go – I’m just about out of stuff to do to it! I’m sure I’ll find some more stuff to break, though, and so that’ll get upgraded from where it’s at now in its own time, I’m sure.



(Photo by Travis Tollett ( www.travistollett.com ) )

AF: If you had to do this all over, what would you do differently?

WK: Honestly? Nothing. All of the things that have happened thus far in the journey have been learning experiences, and other than losing my temper and not being able to keep my mouth shut I don’t think I’ve made the same mistake or had the same problem twice, so I feel like for the most part thus far everything’s happened and transpired to wind up about as good as it could have. I don’t like looking back and wishing that I’d done something or anything differently regardless, though. I try and look at everything like I’m driving a car on a racetrack – stay two turns ahead, don’t worry about what’s already happened because it’s already behind you. “What you manifest is before you” kinda thing. I feel like if I’d done some things differently I would have maybe avoided some of the situations I’ve gotten myself and the car into, but I feel like without those situations I may not have pushed myself to where I am now. Does that sound too cliche?

Actually, I take all that back. I’d paint the damn car a different color. I hate that stupid yellowish-tan. That’s what I get for letting a female pick the color for the car, though.

AF: How can people support you?

WK: Donations and sponsorship inquiries can be sent to wil@idbracing.com – I still don’t have an official “Title Sponsor” other than myself, and there’s always room for another logo on the car!

Header Image by Devon Dobson/Imagine Media ( www.facebook.com/ImagineMe.LLC ) )