Full Throttle

He drives a race car in one of the most up-and-coming series on the track today.

He does pretty well, too. And he’s only fifteen years old.

Trey Williams sits behind the steering wheel of the number 47 car in the Lone Star Legacy Series, a three-quarter scale NASCAR circuit based out of San Marcos.

Williams may be young, but he’s done his homework and is quickly moving himself up in the driving ranks. He started racing almost a year ago. He and his father, Bill, had always been big fans of NASCAR, and Williams did a lot of research on young people racing.

“My dad said if I got good enough grades, we’d look into it,” Williams said.

Soon after that, Williams was on the all-A honor roll at Wimberley High School and they bought the car and dove right into the sport.

Last year, Williams began racing towards the end of the season and raced five weekends in a row all over Texas, but he said that is rare.

“Normally we race every other week, sometimes twice in a row - but not normally,” Williams said.

This season is starting slow and he’s only raced twice in a month. The racing season generally goes from late March through October, but the offseason is full of work to be done on the car.

His series only runs in Texas, but this year Williams is planning to go to Oklahoma once and may go to North Carolina a couple of times for national races. But he still plans to race the full local schedule.

His racecar is part of the Allison Legacy Series, which was started 10 years ago by legendary NASCAR driver Donnie Allison’s sons - Kenny, Ronald and Donald. They built the cars based on the NASCAR Nextel cup chassi, just scaled down to three-quarters the size. The cars are powered by a four-cylinder Mazda B-2200 truck engine with about 125 horsepower and the standard five-speed transmission. The engines are sealed to limit alterations to the basic car.

The series is designed to minimize racing costs and place the emphasis on the driver instead of the equipment.

Several drivers have come through the series on the way to stock car racing careers, including NASCAR Nextel driver Brian Vickers.

That’s what Williams hopes to be one day.

The Lone Star Legacy Series is one of the local branches of the national Allison series. Williams is one of the youngest drivers in the series. He and one other teen, a 14-year-old, are the only young people. Everyone else is in their 30’s and 40’s, and more experienced, so he has some pretty tough competition on the circuit.

Williams said the Allison racecars are not too popular yet, but are quickly gaining popularity. The series races in most asphalt tracks all over the country - no dirt tracks.

They run on tracks not much over a half a mile because the speed of the longer tracks would be too much for the cars.

“Anything over about 120 and the cars just aren’t safe,” Williams said.

On the short tracks, the cars can reach up to 115 miles per hour.

Thunder Hill Raceway in Kyle hosts some of the Lone Star Legacy Series competitions, where the average speed on its track are 90 mph.

The cars weigh almost 1,500 pounds dry, but must weigh a minimum of 1,675 pounds with a driver in order to race. That is less than half the weight of a NASCAR.

The larger NASCARs wouldn’t run well on the short tracks like those the Allisons run on due to the shortness of the straight-aways and frequency of the turns.

The fastest car that runs at tracks like THR are the super-late models, which have light chassis with 600 horsepower engines. But the cost of running a super-late is staggeringly higher than the Allison series.

In the Allison series, total cost per season is around $8,000. In a late-model - which is the next class up - running a season will cost at least $15,000. The next class is the super-late models, which cost even more than that per season.

A brand new Allison car runs almost $17,000, but the Williams bought theirs used for $10,000.

The engines are supposed to last for three years, but Williams said that to keep a competitive engine that’s going to perform right all the time, it should be rebuilt every couple of years. A rebuild costs at least $3,500.

Riley Transmissions in San Marcos is now able to rebuild and reseal the engines. Before, the engines had to be sent to North Carolina, where they are rebuilt by Roush Racing, a NASCAR team. That meant the engine was in good hands, but it took a long time to get it back.

Each day there are adjustments and repairs to make on the car.

“There’s always something wrong with it - I’ve gotta change springs today, the carburetor is messed up,” Williams said. “It’s just an everyday deal.”

Williams was named most improved driver for the Lone Star Legacy Series last season.

“We started out running about a second slower than everybody else and by the last race - about three races later - we were up there with the leaders, within a tenth of a second,” he said. “We made a big, big change.”

Williams and his dad do a lot of work on the car, but they do have help.

The local Lone Star Legacy Series is run by Bob Riley, who owns Riley Transmission on Hwy. 123 across from San Marcos High School. Riley is the series director.

“He’s been really good to me, he’s helped us through,” Williams said. “Most people don’t share stuff with you about racing because they don’t want you to get ahead.” “Without him and Nick Holt, we definitely wouldn’t be where we are now.”

Holt is their crew chief from San Antonio. He makes all the calls, judges how the car is and analyzes everything to see what needs to be done.

“I’m kind of his apprentice, trying to learn how to do everything,” Williams said. “He is a suspension engineer and has worked with NASCAR teams and drivers, so we were really lucky to find him.”

The Williams hooked up with Holt at THR where he was the competition director.

The Williams went to one of Holt’s six-week suspension seminars. Since then, every time they could get him, they did. Holt helps with many different series and is really busy with racing.

“It’s tough to get him,” Williams said. “But when we get him, he’s a miracle-worker.” Because the motors are all the same, Williams said the only to way get around the track faster depends on how the how easily the car turns and driver skill.

“You want to just be able to turn the wheel and not have to fight it, because when you’re fighting the car, you’re losing time,” said Williams. “So you want to get the car perfect.”

Teams are mainly just working on the suspension, springs and tire pressure. Because each track is different, race day starts very early at 9 a.m. The teams get a few practices on that track throughout the day to fine-tune the cars to the venue. Races don’t usually begin until around 7 p.m., which can sometimes make for a late night.

Something as minor as temperature can affect race performance.

“Five degrees in temperature change will throw your car off, so its a never-ending battle,” Williams said. “It’s pretty frustrating.”

He said that knowing what to adjust is the hardest thing about racing.

“Tire pressures - you’ve gotta get them perfect,” Williams said. “The differences between the left and right sides have to be perfect or the car is not going to be right - they can be a tenth of a pound off.”

Williams will receive his official driver’s license August 17, and couldn’t be happier.

“People don’t realize you can drive on the track without a license,” he said.

A license does have to be issued from the Allison brothers, but Williams said there’s really no requirements for it.

“As long as you are safe, and the series director deems you safe, then you can drive,” he added.

Williams and his father attended the Finish Line Racing School over spring break, which is considered the premier stock car racing school in the country. NASCAR driver’s teams go there for training.

“When you are talking to an agent about trying to get a driving deal, they won’t even talk to you unless you’ve been there,” said Williams. “So it’s pretty prestigious. It was a lot of fun.”

Williams was the youngest one there and got to learn side-by-side with people who are already in the field. He made friends with Jeff Anton, who drives in the Busch North Series.

Students have to apply to get into the three-day sessions, and those lacking experience don’t get in.

“They helped us with our driving lines - how we enter the corner and exit the corner, when to pick up the gas,” said Williams. “There’s a lot of engineering stuff involved, and those are the guys to get tips from. They know what they’re talking about. It was a good experience.”

Williams is sponsored by Patriot Motor Sports, which came from Patriot Car Wash - the family business with locations in Kyle and Lakeway.

Currently, he has no other sponsors.

“Without sponsors it is really hard to function as a race team,” Williams said. “NASCAR teams couldn’t do it without a sponsor, and it is the same for us.”

Though not the millions of dollars that NASCAR teams need, the financial burden of racing in the series is hard to hold on one set of shoulders. Sponsors take on some of the cost to help the team out. Sponsors can take on as little or as much as they want, from hotel rooms or gas for traveling races to tires, engines, or other car parts.

Williams said that there is a lot of exposure when sponsoring racecars.

“I don’t think people realize how much good sponsoring motorsports really does,” he said. “Every car rolling down the road would see your logo on our trailer, every person at the racetrack would hear your name announced as a sponsor. It’s way more exposure than any that you see at little league or football field.”

Williams’ next race is May 28 at the Houston Motorsports Park in northwest Houston, which is almost identical to THR but has walls all around it. Williams said there are some pretty bad wrecks there, but it doesn’t scare him.

“It’s just too fun to think like that, and if you were in a wreck, you would hit before you knew what was going on. You don’t really think about it. It’s not that scary,” he said.

He anticipates a pretty good finish at Houston.

“We have some carburetor problems right now that we have to work out before we get there,” Williams said. “If we can get that fixed we’ll be pretty good for Houston, and it’s good competition.”

He said his pit crew has been awesome. The team consists of WHS students Ryan and Cullen Harrison and Randy Todaro. Williams said that they work hard, making a lot of the car adjustments on race day, changing tires and driving the hauler around to the different tracks with the racecar.

After the Houston race, Williams comes back to Thunder Hill on June 4 before heading to Europe on a school-sponsored trip.

But don’t worry - he won’t miss any races. The group gets back just in time for the next series contest on June 18 in Corpus Christi.

Williams wants to pursue a career in the sport by continued racing and going to college for motorsports engineering. He said education is really starting to be more of a factor in racing. Younger people are coming to the sport with degrees in everything from engineering to marketing.

If he is not driving, crew chief would be his next choice, but anything helping out with a team would suit Williams fine.

“But again, I would like to drive. Let me stress that,” he added.

And just what it is like in the cockpit of one of these racecars? “Hot,” Williams said. “We have a tool that measures tire temperature, and once shot it into the car and it was 140 degrees after the race.” But he adds that after about the first 20 laps, it’s hardly noticeable.