Meet the 2024 IMCA national sport compact champion, Kaylee Richards. Kaylee juggled raising seven-year-old Paisley with her husband, Dillon; working a full-time job as a production coordinator at a manufacturing company; and racing three nights.
“It is difficult sometimes,” said Kaylee, of Wymore, Nebraska. “I work at 5 a.m. and I am off at 1:30. Paisley is in first grade. During racing season, I pick her up from school, and then we go straight to the garage. We take a break for supper and then go back at it. Thank goodness for my husband. We work together, and we never have to persuade Paisley to go to the races with us — she understands our commitment.”
The trophy case got loaded this season. One national title. One Lady Eagle award for being the top woman across all divisions in IMCA. Two track championships (Concordia Raceway in Kansas and Junction Motor Speedway in Nebraska). And 24 wins in her first 50 starts. Perhaps Kaylee had some added motivation from her No. 1 fan.
“Paisley enjoyed going to all the races, but she didn’t want to watch if I wasn’t in the lead,” Kaylee said. “I don’t think winning the championships and Lady Eagle Award has registered with her yet. She only understands when we bring the trophies home — she gets excited. She’ll be going to four banquets this year, so she’ll be happy when she sees those trophies.”
Racing Roots for Kaylee Richards
Kaylee Richards grew up in the sport. She knows what it takes to be successful. Kaylee’s mother, Rhonda Mavis, was a well-known factory stock racer. Following in her footsteps, Kaylee went on to win championships Beatrice Speedway in Nebraska and Thunder Hill Speedway in Mayetta, Kansas, before this season.
“She told me from day one: ‘Hold my line. Keep my nose clean. You should load the car on the trailer at the end of the night the way it looked when you unloaded it at the start of the night,’” said Kaylee. “I lived by that — until this year. Dillon said if we are going for the national title, you go out there to win. He said, ‘A race car is a race car — not a show car. If we come in with dents, it’s okay. As long as we win, we don’t care what the car looks like.’ That’s quite a contrast in philosophies.”]
With Dillon’s encouragement, Kaylee Richards set out to compete for the IMCA national title. Dillon won the national sport compact championship in 2017.
The Work that Goes into a Championship
“Dillon does most of the work,” Kaylee said. “I do the maintenance checklist. I’m always there to work with him. If it were not for Dillon, I would not have gotten championships. Besides the work he puts into the cars, more importantly, he pushed me out of my comfort zone. I learned that once you put helmet on, you don’t have friends, you are out there to win.”
The Richards built two Chevrolet Cavaliers of a year campaign of running weekly at three tracks — Beatrice Speedway, Concordia Raceway in Kansas; and Junction Motor Speedway in McCool Junction, Nebraska. They knew they had to win championships at least at two tracks, and any downtime would dash hopes of a national title.
At Beatrice, Kaylee crashed hard. The couple repaired the car only in a couple of days. Then, three weeks later, the car wound up on the frontstretch wall at Beatrice, severely damaging it. Dillon helped built a new car in just four days.
The hard work started to pay off by June, when Kaylee Richards assumed the lead in the national points.
“That’s when the stress got worse,” Kaylee said. “Every night, I wanted to have the best night I could. I started keeping track of all my finishes and the finishes of the other drivers at the top of the standings. I did my homework every day. Then, I took a deep breath and did the best I could do on race night.”
That best wound up being the best in the nation.
“Winning a [national] championship is a big goal that I had never pictured myself accomplishing,” said Kaylee. “I accomplished something meaningful being the second female to win national title in any IMCA class. Not just guys win championships. People who have the right mindset can do it. I’m an example of that, and hopefully it inspires others.”
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.
