Go-cart racing season is getting off to a start this month, and a 13-year-old Glenview boy who drives one is looking forward to having a winning run.
Jason Pribyl, has competed in about 400 races and won dozens of awards and championships, he said.
Pribyl is the driver and his father is “the crew” working on the karts, he said. The teen said kart racing started as, and continues to be, a bonding experience for him and his dad, Steve, because it captures both of their interests: he enjoys sports and competition and his father enjoys cars.
“It lets me totally nerd out on cars,” Steve Pribyl said. “It’s fun to hang out with him. We spend our weekends on the road traveling together, so hours in the car we have opportunities to discuss things.”
During the 2018 racing season, Pribyl won first place in two categories of the road racing grand nationals, according to his racing website.
He also remembers when he first professional go-kart race — at age 7.
He was ahead in the go-kart race, and as he started the turn into the final lap he heard a loud noise, he recalls.
As he pushed on the gas pedal of the kart, it wouldn’t go any faster but the motor revved up.
He coasted the final lap and his kart stopped on the finish line.
Pribyl, now an eighth grader at Springman Middle School, said he competes in two categories in the junior class: sprint racing and road racing.
Sprint racing takes place on tracks specifically designed for go-kart racing and are usually less than a mile long, Pribyl said.
For road races, Pribyl said he competes on tracks that are usually about two miles long that are used by cars or motorcycles.
Pribyl has two karts, a sprint one with an upright seat and a road kart with a lay down seat. The road kart is longer and narrower than the sprint kart, which makes it better suited for high speeds and wider corners on road racing tracks, he said.
Road races are similar to “old-school” NASCAR races where there is a chain of cars, nose to tail, and the cars pass each other and slide back into place.
“It’s such a cool thing that happens because we’re going at such top speeds and we all have to trust each other every second of the race,” Pribyl said.
In the 2018 racing season, Pribyl said he competed in a road race where he was the only junior class racer, so he started the race in last place out of 25 competitors. But, he said he finished fourth overall, so he was pleased with his performance in that race.
Pribyl and his dad have worked together throughout his career traveling about 15 weekends a year — mostly in the Midwest, like to Indiana, Ohio and Michigan — to compete, he said.
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The racing season typically goes from April to October, he explained.
Racing weekends are typically three-day weekends with practice on Friday and races on Saturday and Sunday, his father said. If they have time during weekends where there are no races, they go to a local track to practice, his father said.
Racing gives Pribyl an opportunity to learn about cars and how to fix, maintain and operate them, his father said. It also gives him business experience because over the years he has acquired sponsors and will continue to build on sponsorships in the future, his father said.
The father and son duo operate under the racing name “Wild Duck Racing,” which first started out as a website and blog name that one day could be turned into a racing business that Pribyl “can leverage to support his career,” his father said.
Pribyl said he wants to pursue racing as a career, and he hopes to be able to race cars one day.
“Some people don’t view it as a sport, but a lot of people still do,” Pribyl said. “It’s a career that I really want to have.”
But, in the more immediate future, Pribyl said he is focused on bonding with his dad and “going faster.”