Mason Looks Forward to 2005 Race Season
Thursday, April 28, 2005
by Kathy Bell - Sprint car racer, Eric Mason, was a busy man last season. He built his own underground, brick home, worked 12-14 hour days at his own construction company and got married to girlfriend, Janelle. As busy as he was, for most of last season, he hung right in there, in the top ten 360 point standings at Knoxville too.
“For a while there, I had so much pressure on me, I didn’t even want to race. I was getting out of my own business and building a house. There wasn’t a lot of time left to work on the sprint car and go racing,” he said.
This year is a different story. No, Eric’s not a whole lot, less busy. But he does have a lot of the pressure off his back. He sold his business and now works for someone else in Ankeny. His beautiful new home is done and he and Janelle are moved in and once again, he’s ready to go racing. Oh, and did I mention, he’s also a full time AIB college student, at night pursuing a degree in Business Administration, Sales and Marketing?
”Things are back to normal again,” he said. “We have a brand new Maxim we won at the Banquet and it’s already red, so we don’t have to paint it. Stacy Redmond is working on our engines. He’s gotten us to go faster every year. We recycle a lot of used equipment and tires from other racers and we’re really fortunate to have a lot of great fans who buy our fuel for us.”
Eric said the fuel program set up at the Knoxville Raceway has helped a lot of racers over the past few years. He said a $40 fuel bill, per night can add up quickly and he really appreciates the fans who have paid for his fuel throughout the past couple of seasons. Eric is a 1993 graduate of Knoxville High School. His dad Jerry, a very important part of his race team, began taking Eric and his younger brother Adam to the races, when they were young. The brothers began their racing career in go-karts. In 1996, they put together a race team, with the two alternating between one sprint car, every other week.
”Switching back and forth made for some interesting garage conversation between the two of us,” Eric said. “We are both competitive and neither one of us liked sharing the sprint car with the other one. We alternated racing every other week, as long as we had a motor stay together.”
Once Adam graduated from high school, he went to the Air Force. Eric had a full time job and did any part time jobs he could find to help offset racing costs. Jerry is a shop teacher at a school in Des Moines. During school breaks he drove a truck for Mike Brooks, Inc. The Mason’s learned early on how to make a race budget stretch and they worked hard for what they had. “Bill McCroskey helped me for a few years and Murphy USA came on board with us. I’m still working on some things for this season,” he said.
Eric realizes how emotional racing can be. He did a stint as an announcer at the Southern Iowa Speedway for Bill McCroskey and Jamie Adams, after getting a little advice from Knoxville announcers Tony Bokhoven and Justin Zoch. “I saw things from the other side of the fence when I worked as an announcer at Osky,” he said. “I learned a lot, especially from Tony and Justin, and I found out it’s almost impossible, to get a hobby stock driver to talk. But overall, it was a lot of fun.”
The Mason’s low budget racing operation doesn’t allow Eric a lot of frills, just the basics as you will notice when he pulls into the pit area pulling his sprinter on an open trailer.
”My dad is one of the major reasons we race. You wouldn’t think a guy would put all his time and money into this. But he does. He used to go to the races at the speedway by Chariton and he’s been going to Knoxville for more than 30 years. He’s always been a sprint car fan and he passed that on to me,” Eric stated.
Eric also credits the B29 sprint car crew, Aaron and Amber Hubler, Terry Massick and his wife Janelle for all they do to support the team.
“I am content racing in the 360 class at Knoxville. Where else can you race weekly, win a car, rear end and other parts and still have a good time? Racing weekly at Knoxville is what I live to do. Things are back to normal, my confidence is there and I can’t wait for the season to begin,” he said.
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