Mike Mahaney: Perseverance Of A Racing Warrior & His Supporting Cast

Column By: EDWARD KOCHERSBERGER / RPW – KINGS FERRY, NY – Misfortune in racing can develop a life of its own. It doesn’t always happen just once to a driver or team. Bad luck can have a lasting impression that will often take weeks and even months to shake off. Mike Mahaney has definitely experienced this kind of performance character in 2017. He has been driving for a few different teams. And the challenges seem to keep following him wherever he goes. But after talking to him at The Action Track in Kutztown last week, Mike shows no indication of giving into these setbacks.

“Between a couple of wrecks in the modified, the sprint car and things like that. It is making things very tough. But we are not going to give up. We are going to keep plugging away and see what we can do.”

Mike Mahaney has tasted some victory though. He picked up a win in an early season race at Action Track USA in Kutztown Pennsylvania.

“It has been pretty rough. I haven’t had a lot of success. But we did get one win here (Kutztown). That felt really good. It kind of got the ball rolling a little bit.”

Mike Mahaney is a modern era motorsports competitor. He will jump from an open wheeled winged sprint car to a Dirtcar Modified. And then he throws in his time driving a smaller Tobias Speedster on Wednesday nights at Action Track USA. He explained what it takes to be successful in all of these different disciplines.

“It’s all very different. Each car takes a lot different set-up, a lot different maintenance, and a lot different to drive. Luckily my sprint car team and owner Doug Emery knows what he is doing with the set up. So I really don’t have to know that. I can focus more on driving the sprint car. But with the Speedster and the modified I am kind of relied on to maintain and help out with things. I am a little more involved. Here at Action Track the last few weeks I have been here by myself. I haven’t even had any crew help. But this week I have a couple of guys here with me. My Dad is here with me and my friend Devin is here with me. I am thankful to have their help.”

It takes a talented driver to find success. It also takes dedicated support. Mikevery grateful for the teams and marketing partners that have supported his efforts to help guide him. .

“I want to thank Buzz Chew Racing for all of their help. They do a fantastic job. We just haven’t had any luck. We are going to Lebanon Valley for our next show this Saturday. We will try our car there. Our next series race is Outlaw Speedway. We are looking forward to those two shows. I also want to thank Jim and Cheryl Brady. They own the car at Brewerton Speedway. We had an awful wreck there two weeks ago. We recovered and came back this past week. We weren’t as fast as we wanted to be. But at least we made it back to the race track. That is a big feat in itself. We are working on our setups for this Friday to hopefully run a little better. Olums helps us with that team as well as my 33 car on Sunday at Utica Rome. Skip Seymour is a big help with getting me to the race track at Utica Rome. He built me the car over the winter. Things have been going okay there. We had a top five and a top ten there. It’s the same thing. We have to get a little more speed. But at least the car is in one piece and we haven’t had any catastrophes. Lastly Doug Emery and us are looking forward to running Speedweek at the end of June. There are a lot of shows that week. We won a race last year at Brewerton during this time of the year. So I hope we can do something like that again.”

Mike Mahaney fans and followers are probably a little concerned for their driver at this point in the season. But with a situational report like this we can also see the potential that it will only be a matter of time before we start seeing him back in victory lane on a regular basis.