School of speed

Spring Valley High sophomore makes select race team

More than 100 applied and 25 were interviewed and tested, but only three young race drivers in the country were asked to be members of the prestigious Ron Sutton Winner's Circle Driving Developmental Race Team in Sacramento, Calif., last September.

And Jace Meier, a sophomore at Spring Valley High School who turned 16 on March 10, was one of those chosen few.

Meier first read about the race team in a classified ad on the Internet and then corresponded with Sutton in e-mails before informing his parents Scott and Shari Meier of what he was up to.

The team, run by 29-year racing veteran Ron Sutton, who has experience in all aspects of motor racing, has 12 championships and over 400 race wins.

The first development driver ever on the team, 18-year-old Bobby Grewohl, showed how much the team helped him when he was awarded a paid ride in a car for 2005 from the Indy Racing League Infinity Pro Series, where he has signed a seven-year professional development contract.

"Imagine if you're a developmental team and you finally have a young man, 18 years old, that literally went back to Kentucky and set the Kentucky Motor Speedway record on the second day of testing at 189 miles an hour," said Scott Meier. "You can imagine you're going to have some heads turn."

Jace Meier tested for the team, registered the best time of all drivers early in the testing and then waited through the process as no other drivers ever matched his time. He talked about what it felt like to make the team.

"It was great when I found out, but it was sort of a subtle thing," he said. "I was one of the first people to test with the team in early July and they tested all the way until August. And throughout the process, (Sutton) would give us updates ... 'He's still the fastest, he's still the fastest.' And then it got down to the last two drivers.

"Because I was the youngest one, I wasn't really expecting (to make the team) at all, especially when I did the test. But then as (Sutton) tested more and more, it slowly became clear that I was going to have one of the fastest times."

Meier found out that he made the team when he received a Federal Express package last September with the press release announcing the names of this year's three drivers

Along with Meier, 19-year-old Benny Moon of Shingle Springs, Calif., and 16-year-old Lindsay Kernohan of Huntington Beach, Calif., were chosen for this year's team from the field of 15- to 22-year-old drivers who tested.

Meier began attending the race team's classes last month and will race in the United States Auto Club California Ford Focus Midget Car Series in his first event for the team on March 26 at the Irwindale Speedway in Irwindale, Calif.

Meier transferred to Spring Valley High School from Faith Lutheran. He sports a 4.1 grade point average and is an honor student as well as a member of the school track team.

He has already set up some goals for his first year on the developmental team.

"This season, because I'm the youngest kid on the team, my goal is to just to learn as much as I can about driving and communicating with the team and to have some wins so when I go in front of Jack Roush or any of the professional team owners, I can say, 'This season I had five wins out of 14 races,' " Meier said. "That would be my goal."

Meier's father said there are plenty of nondriving skills that have become a huge part of the auto racing game his son is now learning about.

"He's got to learn how to communicate in all those aspects," Scott Meier said. "He's got to learn how to communicate with sponsors and with the media. All those tools (are) lifelong skills he can use. The last time we were in Sacramento, they put him through an eight-hour classroom environment just training him on the things we've talked about."

Besides racing midget cars in California this year, Jace Meier also plans on continuing his kart racing, which he first started at age 12.

"I'm extremely excited about everything that's going on with the Midget (cars), but there's a part of me that's even more excited about the karting," Meier said. "I'm just doing it more for fun and to stay in shape but it's still cool to go out on the weekends with (my father) and race."

Meier raced karts until age 15, and then began racing in the Legends Semi-Pro Division at The Bullring at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway last year, where he finished fifth in the points standings and was the runner-up in the Rookie of the Year voting.

Among Meier's notable accomplishments in his burgeoning racing career are becoming the Rotax Junior Champion in the Southern Nevada Championship; the R-Max Challenge; the X-Plex Championships where he set a junior track record; and the Rotax Junior Western Regional Championship.

Both father and son spoke of what they hoped the next two years would bring them in the sport.

"Our primary focus is obviously to do well in the midgets in California because his racing is very sporadic there. He'll race like three times in three weeks and then he'll have seven weeks off," Scott Meier said. "What he's also done is go to one of the local kart companies here in town and they've sponsored him and helped him with getting a go-kart and he'll race intermittently out at Sloan at the local race track to remain fine-tuned."

"My ultimate goal this year is to do the midgets this year and then run some kind of road course series, whether it be Formula Ford, Formula BMW or one of the minor league road course series next year," Jace Meier said.

He also revealed his long-term goal in the sport.

"The ultimate thing for me would be to race Indy cars like in the IRL racing league and the Indianapolis 500," he said. "My goal is to win the Indianapolis 500. That's it for me."