Young talent to tackle veterans on the track

Never in recent local auto racing history has such a crop of young local up-and-coming talent existed.

And the group of three drivers — Medical Lake’s Braeden Havens, 21, Newman Lake’s Blake Williams, 20, and hopefully Nicole Behar, an 18-year-old out of Otis Orchards — will converge on the half-mile oval at Spokane County Raceway Saturday night, Aug. 29 and mix it up with some of the the best drivers in the Northwest in the Tri-Track super late model I-90 Challenge.

Gates open at 5 p.m. with a 90-lap feature race that pays the winner $3,000 capping the evening.

The result ought to be interesting when these fresh faces test their skills against veteran drivers like the ageless Garrett Evans, who has raced for the better part of the last 40 years; or one of the most successful in Gary Lewis or Canadian legend, Pete Harding, a rival of Evans for years.

Each of these “youngsters” have taken similar routes to their current racing paths, all starting in go-karts on dirt and advancing through the ranks into entry-level classes racing on asphalt.

Williams, however, actually began on a little different path than his compatriots. He raced a four-wheeler inside the horse barn at the Spokane Interstate Fairgrounds a decade ago.

And none have been more successful as of late than Williams who is fresh off a near-miss runner-up last Saturday night in the NASCAR K&N Pro Series West race at Colorado National Speedway near Denver.

In only his third career start in the stepping-stone series for higher level NASCAR competition, Williams trailed winner, Ryan Partridge, by a mere 1.7 seconds as the checkered flag flew.

“At the end I was catching him, it was like a half a straightaway,” Williams said. “It would have been nice to (win) but second place is pretty good.”

It’s been a good rookie season in K&N competition for Williams, who is back in the driver’s seat after sitting out 2014 to recuperate from a non-racing automobile accident where he suffered serious injuries.

Time away from racing does not seem to have affected the West Valley High School grad who broke onto the scene as a force with his 2013 Idaho 200 victory at just 18.

In his other two K&N starts this season aboard the car rented from Jefferson-Pitts Racing out of Yakima Williams finished fifth at Stateline July 11 and was seventh Aug. 22 at Monroe, Wash.

In the Tri-Track Late Series, Williams began his year with a runner-up, and then won that group’s race June 6 at Stateline, just weeks after returning to the track.

And given a few more laps last Saturday, Williams thought he might have been able to score that most unlikely win. “I wish we would have had a little more time to catch the No. 9 car and see what we had for him,” Williams said.

In the past this area has produced a pair of notable drivers who graduated to the big time. Tom Sneva of course is the most famous, having cut his racing teeth in the open-wheel Canadian American Modified Racing Association (CAMRA) in the 1970s before graduating to a long IndyCar career that included the 1983 win at the Indy 500.

Chad Little drove stock cars in Winston West, the forerunner of the K&N Series in the mid-1980s and that earned him nearly 220 starts in NASCAR Winston Cup over a career that began in 1989 and lasted 11 seasons.

Whether any of these drivers elevate themselves to major league racing is surely a long-shot and Williams is one who, despite his youth, fully understands how difficult it might be to make racing a paying career.

When asked if his racing future has NASCAR’s top-tier of a Sprint Cup ride in it, Williams chuckled.

“Of course I would love to do that but it seems like nothing’s really free anymore,” he said. “I’ll try my best to get there, but it’s the right timing with the right people.”

Paul Delaney can be reached at [email protected].