Media Contact: Megan Dupuy - woodhullracewaypr@gmail.com or (315) 729-3825 For Immediate Release – July 21st, 2016 – Joe Kaminski photo -
Just like last week’s driver, this week’s has had plenty of experience behind the wheel. He’s come up through the ranks racing in his local track’s youth four cylinder division.
33-year-old Donnie Lawson races his No. 11 Modified on a weekly basis at Woodhull Raceway. Off the track, Donnie is an elementary school teacher at Jasper-Troupsburg and has been there for eleven years. He has four kids, one of which races in a go-kart division at area track Snake Speedway.
Laswon has found himself behind the wheel of a racecar for an impressive nineteen years.
“Guess I started in 1997, I ran go-karts for a year,” Lawson said during the interview after being asked how long he has been racing.
The name Lawson might sound familiar to you. If it does, it is probably because you know Donnie’s dad or grandfather. Although his grandfather did not race, he was highly involved in racing. Donnie’s grandfather was even a NASCAR Official. However, Donnie’s father did race which makes Lawson a second-generation driver.
From the go-karts, Donnie moved into his local track’s youth four cylinder division. If you remember Donnie Lawson from the youth division, you can remember that he won the championship at Black Rock Speedway. From the youth division Lawson moved into the adult four cylinder division.
“I ran four cylinders for two years then I ran modified and sportsman,” Lawson said. Since moving up from the four cyliner division, Lawson had went back and forth between the modified and sportsman.
This driver races whenever possible and tries to go to as many tracks as he can. You will most likely see him at Outlaw Speedway on Friday night and Woodhull Raceway on Saturday. This past Sunday, Lawson ran double duty at Skyline Raceway racing a crate sportsman and his modified. Lawson has also been to Penn Can Speedway and Five Mile Point Speedway.
“We try to travel as much as we can.”
Running tracks back-to-back can be hard and traveling means having to adjust to each track. During the interview, Lawson was asked what it was like to run a full weekend of racing?
“It’s enjoyable, you get treated really well when you go to the tracks, people are always happy to see you. It breaks up that every week routine.”
He was also asked if it was hard to adjust to all the different tracks? “Yeah, because the biggest thing is this track, Woodhull is so different from everywhere else. Sometimes you learn habits that don’t help you at other places.”
During the interview, we asked Donnie about how important the youth four cylinder class was to not only him but the area tracks that have this division as well?
“I think they’re good,” Lawson responded. “It teaches you a lot about how to drive in traffic. There isn’t a lot of motor, so you can’t get out of the gas a lot.”
Lawson also touched upon how the crate sportsman is also a good class to get youth into racing. At 14 years old, you can jump behind the wheel of a crate. This helps the kids learn how to wheel an open wheel racecar.
“Anything that can introduce somebody to racing is good.”