Young racers learning their craft at Strathmore Motorsports Park

Young local motorsport racers head just a little east, where they see who can circle a 1.2-kilometre track the fastest.

The Strathmore Motorsports Park is where developing race drivers, young and old, can test their skills on a twisty, curvy paved 1.2-kilometre track.

It’s the home of the Calgary Kart Racing Club (CKRC), and while the karts are much smaller than cars, they easily go more than 100 kilometres an hour.

The club is made up of individual racers and their families and some race teams.

Troy Pachal and Spence Hogg started the Alloy Race Team in 2020 to develop young talented drivers.

“It’s an incredible sport,” said Pachal.

“It is a family; like, this is a very close-knit community. We all know who each other are, and we’re all doing this crazy thing together at the same time, and so you celebrate each other’s successes.”

Pachal says like any sport, cost can become a barrier for young drivers.

“It’s pretty challenging to actually make it without a lot of familial funding or some type of backing that makes that difference,” he said.

“There are cost barriers to getting into motorsport, but when you compare this to hockey or any other sport, like, everything has a cost to it these days, but there are economical ways to go racing.”

Alloy Racing helps drivers and their families financially but also provides driver training.

“When you come together as a team and you collectively have access to tools and knowledge and data and people that are great at coaching and people that are great at driving and people that understand lap analysis and data,” said Hogg, “when you can put all these people under the same roof effectively, you all just accelerate massively ahead of the rest of the crowd.”

Hogg says the program at Alloy is a kickstart for drivers who want to race internationally representing Canada, and he says the popularity of motorsport has skyrocketed with documentaries like Netflix’s Drive to Survive and the recent blockbuster F1: The Movie.

“Some of the people that have driven with Alloy or worked with us closely initially got their exposure to motorsport through Netflix documentaries or YouTube documentaries,” he said.

“The F1 movie obviously has had a massive influence on motorsport."

Aidan Carruthers, 18, is an Alloy-sponsored driver who started karting when he was just eight.

“Oh, it’s an experience unlike any other from the adrenaline standpoint, from the fun standpoint,” he said.

“You’re out there, really racing inches between the next guy at 100 km/h plus; it’s a real rush for sure.”

Carruthers says he hopes to finish well in the Western Canadian Karting Championships this year, where 40 of the best drivers go head-to-head.

“I love karting,” he said.

“At the end of the day, I wouldn’t rather do anything else than this.”

Lucas Hand got his start a little later in life.

The 17-year-old got into his first kart in 2020 and hasn’t looked back.

He enjoys spending time with his dad, who helps work on the machine.

“It’s a great bonding experience with my family, even when my mom comes out,” he said.

“But it’s mostly my dad who’s out here wrenching out my car all the time, and it’s just great having him around, getting to know him on a deeper level, not being like a normal kid and playing video games all the time.”

Hand wants to get to the top of motorsport in some capacity—likely not Formula 1 because its rookie driver is too close to his age.

“I think for him, he looks at it as a potential career opportunity,” said Mike Hand, Lucas’s father.

“His motivation keeps increasing, so we are looking to get him into cars now, so next we’ve already done some Formula tests with some Formula racing teams … the F4 teams in the U.S., and we’ve had some success there, so we’re just taking one step at a time.”

Alloy Racing has set up a beginners course of sorts online for families to see if racing is for them.

You can learn more about it at https://courses.alloyracing.com/fast-track.