Matt Mackey started off the season intending to just train his kids how to drive their sport compacts with manuals. At the end of the year, though, Mackey walked away with a DIRTcar sport compact national championship.
“I got into a car and told my kids to follow me and watch what I do,” Mackey, of Delavan, Illinois, said. “It’s easier than explaining it to them.”
His children, Matthew, 15, and Haylee, 20, drove automatics before.
“Five-speeds are faster,” Mackey said. “I raced them hard, me and five to six of my buddies kept the pressure on them. We race clean, and my kids race clean. They learned fast.”
Mackey started racing sport compacts in 2012. Since then, he’s built a fleet of sport compacts, with nine in his garage right now. Drivers included Matt Mackey, Haylee Mackey, Matthew Mackey, uncle Richard Mackey and friends Jeremy Hancock, Brant Rhodes and Danny Oates. And he also offered his cars to give kids a chance to race, including Connor Petrakis and Colton Ellis.
“I was once that kid,” Mackey said. “It [means] so much to me to give kids a chance to drive.”
Mackey hauled his entourage on flatbed tow trucks and a three-car trailer. The Cavaliers and Cobalts visited a variety of tracks.
On Fridays, they competed at Kankakee County Speedway. Saturdays they raced either Peoria or Spoon River speedways. And Sundays they traveled to Quincy Raceways.
“I said, ‘You know you want to beat your dad, I know you do,’” Mackey said. “The next thing I knew I had to chase them down instead of them chasing me down. To me, that’s better than winning a national championship.”
Matthew Mackey finished second to his old man in national points, missing by 25 points.
“My son had my car from last year,” Mackey said. “It was second in the nation, but he couldn’t make it win. I was winning in my new car, and he thought it was the car. So, I switched cars with him and went out and won several races in the car he couldn’t win with. He said, ‘Dad, I want my car back.’ We switched and then he went out and won his first race.”
In the end, Matt Mackey achieved his initial goal. His kids learned how to race with five-speed manuals, and Mackey managed to win a national title along the way.
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.
