Payne: For Taylors Detroit race is all in the family

Posted by hpayne on April 10, 2015

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For most of us, a family weekend in the car means a quiet trip Up North with Dad at the helm of the Suburban and the kids buried in their iPods in the backseat.

It’s a little different for the Taylor family.

One of motor racing’s most prominent tribes, the Taylors spend their weekends in loud, cramped vehicles doing up to 200 mph. When the TUDOR United SportsCar Championship roars onto Belle Isle next month for the Chevrolet Sports Car Classic – sharing the show bill with the Verizon IndyCar Series – the Taylors will be a favorite to spray champagne in victory lane.

Dad Wayne Taylor, 58, is an endurance racing legend, a two-time Daytona 24-Hour winner. But these days, Pops is in the backseat (that would be a metaphor. There is no backseat in a 600-horsepower Corvette DP missile) balancing the books of Wayne Taylor Racing, while his hot-shoe sons – Ricky, 25, and Jordan, 23 – take turns at the wheel.

In motorsports culture family dynasties make the Clintons and Bushes look like pikers. Andretti, Unser, Rahal, Petty, Earnhardt, and more have dominated the pit lane over the years. But Ricky and Jordan are rare siblings who pilot Dad’s wheels. Only drag racing’s formidable Force clan – John and daughters Courtney and Brittany – compare.

The boys seem to have had a normal childhood. Which is to say, soccer was their first sport.

“We grew up (in Florida) around racetracks, but until we were 10 we weren’t really that interested,” says Jordan, the bespectacled one. “We’d be at the track but we would always have a soccer ball to kick around.”

But they had oil in their veins. Eventually, the track called. Beginning with go-karts.

“It was very low key at the start,” says Ricky. “Not until we were 12-13 did we get our own kart. My Dad started spending more time with us, and that’s how we got more serious about it.”

They climbed the podium fast. Barber open-wheel racing, Formula 2000, prototype sports cars. At the improbable age of 18, Rick Taylor joined his father to race a Sun Trust Bank-sponsored, Pontiac Riley prototype in the Rolex 24-Hours of Daytona. Sixteen-year old Jordan made the trip too – entered with a different team in the GT class.

Heady stuff. Goosebumps for Dad.

“Now, if we can just get my wife, Shelly, in the pace car, we can have the have the entire Taylor family in the race,” quipped Wayne at the time.

For the next few years the boys came and went like teenagers do. Rick left the team nest. Jordan came on board in 2013. Then finally, last year, Taylor racing was family. In a sport where team-mates often feud more than speak, the close Taylor boys are more like an Olympic two-man bobsled team. Teamwork. Teamwork. Teamwork.

“We’ve never been that competitive with each other which is good because you can take the ego out of it,” Jordan says. “On any weekend if Ricky is faster than me then we used that to our advantage. We‘re talking to each other.”

It didn’t take long to nab their first win. Right here in Detroit last May.

“For a street course it’s really good,” says Jordan of the twisty Belle Isle circuit. “It’s fast and wide, and compared to Long Beach its miles better. Not as bumpy.”

Detroit has better roads than California? Refreshing to hear.

“This is a big event for us, especially being the Corvette team with GM headquarters right here,” adds Ricky looking out over a barren Belle Isle when I interviewed the brothers in early March. The place looks different without the leaves of May. Or pit stalls. Or grandstands.

But the Taylors came here in winter because racing is about more than driving fast. It’s sponsor dinners, series promotion, and missionary work. The boys love the missionary work. They want other kids to know what a great career racing can be. This day they have proselytized to a rapt audience at Cody High School’s Detroit Institute of Technology.

“We were introduced to the sport really young,” says Ricky. “When we were in school other kids didn’t know what we were talking about. It’s cool . . . to share our experience with Cody kids and talk about the technology transfer between the school and what they can apply to the motor sports industry.”

They’re still learning themselves. Like how to run the family business someday. “Dad always talks about retiring,” smiles Ricky. “But I don’t think he’s anywhere close to that. It’s hard for him to keep busy outside racing right now.”

That, and he’s having too much fun on family road trips.

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