Photograph courtesy of Grant Ryley

Pedal to the Metal: Willow Glen resident Grant Ryley, who started racing at the age of 20, has been racing in the Championship Auto Racing Team's Toyota Atlantic Championship Series for the past two years.




Willow Glen resident races cars professionally in series

By Amy Jenkins

Some drivers complain about cars speeding past them at 80 miles per hour on the freeway, but that is nothing compared to the 165 miles per hour Grant Ryley's car can reach.

Ryley, 28, got a late start in his racing career, he says. While most drivers start racing at 9 years old, he started at 20 because he says he wasn't sure how to get into the profession. But he knew what he wanted to accomplish in life ever since he was 2 years old. Even at that young age he felt the need for speed.

"When I was young I got onto things and tried to go fast on them," says Ryley, who has lived in Willow Glen for two years. "I would also watch racing on TV while growing up."

His racing ambition continued, and after high school he drove go karts, then moved to Arizona for a construction job that provided rent so he could save money to put himself through racing school. He moved back to Monterey and joined a series for two years where he "learned the ropes, crashed a lot, got involved in the sport, met people, raced a different kind of car and became a professional race car driver," he says.

Ryley races in the Championship Auto Racing Team's Toyota Atlantic Championship Series, which is one level lower than Indy car racing, he says. The CART series is the opening act for Indy racing in the Champ Car Series. As a professional, he must find sponsorship money himself to cover the $1.5 million it takes to pay for everything involved in car racing. That amount covers the cost of the car, mechanics, and fees to pay the 12-person team.

Another difference between professional and amateur car racing is in professional racing there is prize money and there is no prize money in amateur racing.

Ryley's goal is to win the championship and move up to the next level, which is Indy car racing, he says. At the next level, the price per car rises from $1.5 to $10 million. He says there are around 25 or 30 cars in the world at the Indy car racing level and thousands of drivers who hope to fill the driver's seats. There are not many Americans involved in Indy car racing, which is one reason the sport is not doing very well, he says.

Ryley is sponsored by a man who works for Microsoft in Seattle, and has designed a program that aims to get more Americans involved in Indy car racing. The team he created and that Ryley is a part of is called Cart to Cart. The program was started two years ago with his own money and he chose to sponsor Ryley and bring him through the Toyota Atlantic Series, with the goal of having Ryley making it to Indy car or Champ Car racing, Ryley says. Ryley's other sponsors include Cupertino Electric Inc., Velocity Ventures and Del Monaco Specialty Foods.

So far Ryley has raced in courses all over the United States and Canada. His favorite course is Laguna Seca in Monterey because there is elevation with a lot of up and down hills. It is a fast course and there are 60- and 100 mile-per-hour corners, he says. The tracks he races have lots of left and right turns, though some are oval, like Nascar, he says.

The 2002 season includes 12 races and starts in Monterey, Mexico, in March and concludes in September. Even now during the off season, Ryley is busy testing his car twice a week on a track in Bakersfield to try to find ways to make the car go faster.

Racers are working with tiny increments of time.

"There might be a separation of two seconds between cars," Ryley says. "With the top 10 cars there might be half a second difference between times. We are working with tenths and hundredths of seconds improvements."

Ryley says there is nothing he would rather do with his life than race, but there are many sacrifices. He has to travel a lot, work out a lot and eat healthy. He can't party, and it is a very competitive sport, he says.

Like most sports, he has to stay in shape because the car is physically demanding. He has no power steering or power breaks, and the down-force adds 60 to 70 pounds of resistance to the steering wheel. Temperatures in the car reach 150 degrees.

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