Those who know Austin Charles know him as “The Big Show.” His daring, yet precise moves take him from the back to the front and often to victory lane. He races and wins — all while being profoundly deaf.
Charles has a cochlear implant. The device converts sound into electrical signals, which get sent directly to the auditory nerve, bypassing the inner ear. It allows him to hear people talk and he can speak, but it has its limitations.
“In the beginning, it was not easy learning to be a driver,” said Charles, 23, of Basehor, Kansas. “Other drivers can hear cars behind them — I cannot. I learned to adapt and overcome that obstacle using my other senses.”
Charles possesses keen eyesight. He can sense the slightest vibrations that most hearing people tend to overlook.
“If you lose one of your senses, the body heightens your other senses to compensate,” Charles, a fourth-generation racer, said. “I can feel the transmission and rear end’s gear motion just by sensing changes in vibrations.”
Charles’s father and grandfather can confirm his uncanny feel for his car.
“He pulled off the track and told his grandfather the gear was about to fail in the rear end,” Charles’s father, Dan, said. “We blew it off. He convinced us to open it up. Sure enough, he was right.”
Whenever Charles ventures to a track that’s unfamiliar with him, he explains to the officials that he’s more than capable of driving. He cannot use a RaceCeiver. However, he pays extra attention to the flagman, infield officials, and other drivers on the track.
Austin Charles currently sits atop the B-mod points standings at Valley Speedway in Grain Valley, Missouri.
“My motto is: ‘I can’t give up. Work hard, have will, and succeed,’” said Charles, who recently earned his 30th career feature win.
Mike Adaskaveg has written hundreds of stories since the website’s inception. This year marks his 54th year of covering auto racing. Adaskaveg got his start working for track photographer Lloyd Burnham at Connecticut’s Stafford Motor Speedway in 1970. Since then, he’s been a columnist, writer, and photographer, in racing and in mainstream media, for several outlets, including the Journal Inquirer, Boston Herald, Stock Car Racing, and Speedway Illustrated. Among Adaskaveg’s many awards are the 1992 Eastern Motorsport Press Association (EMPA) Ace Lane Photographer of the Year and the 2019 National Motorsports Press Association (NMPA) George Cunningham Writer of the Year.
