Young auto racers from Pewaukee, Mukwonago taking every opportunity to shine
Brandon Lemke climbed into his Honda Civic after a day at Mukwonago High School on Jan. 27, then drove with his father through the night 12 hours to South Carolina. Just for the chance to drive some more.
“It’s really small but gets really good gas mileage,” Lemke said of his ride. “To fill the gas tank only costs 20 bucks.”
Lemke, 16, is chasing his dreams of big-time auto racing, and sometimes that necessitates these long voyages. In South Carolina, he was able to test a limited late-model car on an oval track. The experience went well, and he was invited to return to compete in the Southeast Limited Late Model series race in mid-February.
“It was a lot better than I thought it was going to be,” Lemke said. “I thought it was going to be really uncomfortable because I’m not used to oval track racing, but it was actually really fun. The car had a lot of power; it was really easy to get used to. It’s definitely something I could see myself doing in the future.”
Racing toward a dream
Lemke may well be the future of auto racing, but it’s a difficult dream to pin down. An experienced go-kart racer, Lemke and his family were among those featured during the single-season run of “KartLife” in 2015 on TruTV, but the reality show did not get a second season.
“I really don’t like hearing my own voice, and we never really get videotaped that much, especially on national TV,” Lemke said. “It was a little weird thinking, ‘Anyone can see this right now.’ They didn’t make us look bad at all; if anything, they made us look good. I had a lot of fun and met a lot of cool people.”
Like many drivers, Lemke is constantly in search of exposure and sponsorship dollars.
“We’ve gotten a lot of tips, people who know marketing that tell us 'you’ve just got to keep bugging them,'” Lemke said. “The squeaky wheel gets the grease.”
Lemke has an agent and a track record of success to sell. He was ranked No. 1 out of 300 drivers in ekarngnews.com for the 2016 Tag Senior Driver Rankings in go-kart racing. He qualified fourth at the 2015 IAME X30 World Challenge in LeMans, France, and was chosen by the Chip Ganassi Racing Team’s Generation Ganassi Driver Identification Program in 2016 as one of the “Ones to Watch."
He still plans to race karts over the next year, with plenty of additional racing mixed in.
“I know for sure in the summer, I’ll do some more Kart races, but if they overlap in the same weekend, I’m pretty sure we’re going to do the car races instead,” he said. “If I could go to Slinger (Super Speedway), that would be awesome; we just don’t have the money to do it.”
Rookie of the Year
Grant Griesbach, 15, of Pewaukee has had the chance to race extensively at Slinger, even in the elite super late models division, but he also knows the limitations of the industry when it comes to sponsorship dollars. The past two years, he’s also raced in Florida, but he won’t be making the trip in 2017.
“We spent a lot of money last year and didn’t get to race much because we wrecked on the second night,” Griesbach said. “A lot of people have backup cars down there, and we don’t really have that. It’s not worth it to spend all that money to go down there and just wreck the car.”
Closer to home, Griesbach has had no trouble making a name for himself. Competing in the limited late model division of the Big 8 traveling series around the Midwest, Griesbach was recently honored at the circuit’s banquet as the Rookie of the Year.
“I like the traveling series, and we sold our limited (late model car) and will be moving up to super next year,” Griesbach said. “They’re both a lot of fun. Slinger, I love the place, but traveling you get to go everywhere and see different tracks and face good competition.”
He considers the recent plaudit a top-shelf accomplishment thus far.
“I’m really proud of it; there were probably five competitors competing for this award,” he said. “To finish sixth in the point standings, 4 points out of the top five, is a really great season.”
The Pewaukee High School freshman also won Rookie of the Year two years ago in the US Legends division at Madison International Speedway. He's been tearing up tracks long before he could legally drive on the highways of America.
“Once I turned 14, I was able to run just about anywhere locally,” he said. “Some tracks, I couldn’t run when I was 13 or under. Slinger has always allowed me since I was 9 or 10 years old to race there. A lot of people don’t trust a kid driving at their race track. It depends who you ask. There are some people that are great and think that I’ve got talent and I can do it just as well as they do, but there are some people who still think I don’t belong out there, that I’m too young.”
The future
Mentored by longtime Waukesha driver Conrad Morgan, Griesbach has been able to learn the ropes at a rapid rate. It’s rare to see drivers competing at this age, perhaps because the sport doesn’t capture a young audience the way it once did.
“Racing is kind of dying down because my generation, there aren’t a lot of people interested in it,” Griesbach said. “I couldn’t get my friends to help me if I needed it; they don’t have an interest in it. You can kind of see how the sport is dying. NASCAR ratings are going down.
“I want to make it to NASCAR. Will it happen? I don’t know. We’re there to have fun and do as best as we can, and if opportunities open up for us to move up, we’ll take them.”
Lemke, who finds himself a lot more open to the idea of stock car racing after his test in South Carolina, takes a similar approach.
“I know I want to race, for sure, professionally,” Lemke said. “I just don’t know what car. There are a ton of different cars and different countries to choose from. It’s endless. I have to do my research. I think my ultimate goal, if I had millions of dollars, would be Formula 1 racing, but that’s huge, and they race all over the world. Indy Car wouldn’t be terrible, NASCAR is just fine.
“Anything with four wheels that goes fast; that’s all I care about.”