Santa Maria High School junior Angel Espinosa was bored with schoolwork, and his grades showed it. He was looking for a reason to stick with his studies.
He found motivation when his automotive shop teacher got him involved in a unique after-school program: drag racing.
In 2007, the Santa Maria Police Department was looking for an activity to get students into classrooms (and to keep racing off of city streets), so officers contacted teacher Lorin Cuthbert and professional drag racing legend Art Foster. In a fit of “temporary insanity,” and to help reduce the school’s high dropout rate, Cuthbert said, he and Foster came up with an objective: Cuthbert’s students would build a nitro-fueled dragster from the ground up, maintain it, and act as pit crew at professional races.
“Our goal was for the guys that have a passion for cars, to give them a venue,” Cuthbert said. “What’s happened, as a side benefit, is these guys have turned into good students.”
The students take the dragster to an American Nostalgia Racing Association track in Bakersfield to race against pro and semi-pro drivers. Because the school requires the program’s nine students to keep their grades up in order to join the team at the racetrack, the class gives them a reason to focus on their studies.
“My grades were low, but I got into the team, and to go to the races, I had to get my grades up,” said Espinosa, who turned F’s into A’s and B’s after being forced to sit out a race. “I was down because my whole racing team was going, and I wasn’t going to get to go, and that motivated me to get my grades up in all my classes.”
Foster, a former Santa Maria High School graduate, brought his 45 years of drag racing experience to the school’s garage, teaching the students all the aspects of a racing team and giving them all the tools to be competitive on a professional level.
Under his tutelage, the students learned the dragster inside and out—taking apart and reassembling the car, mixing nitro and methanol fuels, and maintaining the engine.
“At 2:30, when school’s out, they’re in that shop,” Foster said. “You’d think they’d been doing this for 20 years.”
The only thing the group doesn’t do with the car is drive it—that’s forbidden for insurance reasons—so the task falls to Foster’s son A.J., a former student of Cuthbert’s.
As the pit crew, the students handle all of the crucial responsibilities involved with getting a car capable of reaching 200 mph ready for a burn. They’re entrusted with keeping the driver safe—getting him in his fire suit and strapping him in the car—and otherwise handling all of the preparations for making the starting line.
“They do everything a professional race crew would do,” Cuthbert said. “They pack the chute, change the oil, check the valves and the air pressure. The driver only drives, and even then he needs help getting in the car and positioning it. We train the students, and they do everything at the track.”
Junior Oscar Gudino, who’s been in the class since its inception, is the team’s crew chief, making sure everyone’s on same page.
“I get nervous at the start,” he said. “I just start praying that everything works. If something goes bad, it’s on me.”
The boys’ mentors say the program teaches the crew important life skills to use on and off the track. Foster said he sees a transformation in the students the moment they get in the van to Bakersfield.
“They’re kids until they actually get in that car. Then they’re young men. They’ve grown up so much,” Foster said. “It’s an amazing program. It gives them a reason to see why they need to go to school, why they need to know math, to know how to communicate, and to know how to act as a team.”
At races, the students have more than held their own. At a meet in Bakersfield earlier this month, they took 14th place in their class, winning the respect of skeptical veteran drivers who didn’t know quite what to make of the new kids on the block.
“We’re out there competing with the guys that have been racing 20 or 30 years,” Cuthbert said. “If you’re going to race, you race with the big boys.”
Drag racing is an expensive sport. The group spends about $2,500 in parts and fuel each time they take the car to the track. While the fuel and various other supplies are donated by a local petroleum company, the dragster goes through more parts in one day than most cars go through in a year. Foster and Cuthbert, who’ve known each other for 35 years, have had to dig into their own pockets to keep the kids going back to the track.
“We’ve gotten a lot of help, but we don’t have the right kind of help,” Foster said.
Cuthbert said he hopes Foster and he can find a sponsor to keep the boys’ hopes alive—in terms of racing and education. m
Staff Writer Jeremy Thomas thought drag racing involved a car and a dress. Contact him at jthomas@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Mar 26 – Apr 2, 2009.