Sipping from a bottle of orange juice while sitting at a table in the Dunkin' Donuts on Standart Ave., Bryan Howland, looks just like any other 18-year-old who might be hanging out in Auburn on a Thursday evening, getting ready to head to a class at nearby Cayuga Community College.
Glenn Gaston / Special to The Citizen
Bryan Howland won the 2005 Patriot Sprint Group points championship.
Bryan Howland won the 2005 Patriot Sprint Group points championship.
And that, said those who know him, might be his most important characteristic.
“He's just a nice, quiet, mild mannered, easy going young man - until you put him in a race car,” said Tom Taber, who runs the Patriot Sprint Group, the Central New York-based dirt-track racing circuit on which Howland is a star. “He's (only) aggressive when he needs to be.”
The lone item that betrays the fact that Howland might be an aspiring professional race car driver and not just a Cayuga CC student is the colorful t-shirt he's wearing underneath his jacket. Looking past the gaudy colors, one can make out the sloping wings of a dirt-track sprint car and the logo of the PSG.
But the shirt could just as easily have an image of Howland, a 2005 graduate of Union Springs High School, who seems to be the 2006 poster boy for the PSG.
Taber said there's a good reason why Howland was one of the most talked-about drivers at a recent dirt car convention.
Even though he didn't win any races, he was the 2004 rookie of the year. In 2005, he topped that by winning the points championship.
Howland drove his No. 51 car, backed financially by Filtrec Corp., his father's business, to four PSG wins and one title at a national series event in Michigan. He earned almost $20,000 in his breakout season.
A poll recently ranked him as North America's 10th-best driver in the 360-cubic inch engine class, which is the second-most powerful engine used in sprint cars.
For some, that kind of attention could lead to a bit of ego-inflation.
But for Howland, who saw many of his Union Springs classmates head off on traditional paths to work or college, the success serves as positive reinforcement that he made the right choice by pursuing a non-traditional career.
“Everybody pushes me to go as far as I can,” Howland said. “We have a lot of people who help us out and want me to (do well). I've never heard anybody say we should slow down.”
One of those people has been Howland's father, John, who has invested hundreds of thousands of dollars and perhaps an equal amount of sweat equity in his son's passion.
Some of the major expenses include multiple cars, which can cost upwards of $50,000 and a 40-foot tractor-trailer that sleeps seven and transports the cars from race to race.
“As long as he continues to perform, we're gonna continue to do whatever it takes to get to the point where he can get a ride,” John Howland said. “I don't want to be a car owner forever. I'd just as soon be able to go to a race and watch him.”
Now that he's made a name for himself in the northern U.S., Howland, who's just days away from his first event of 2006 (the three-day American Sprint Car Series season opener in Tampa, Fla. from Jan. 26-29) knows this year's challenge is a little trickier than just being the fastest car in the 30-lap, 45-minute races he enters.
“Hopefully we can knock down some big sponsors and it will carry us a little bit farther,” he said. “Right now we're pretty much at our limits financially.”
The team has already taken one step in raising Howland's profile: attending this week's event in Florida, which should be the first of a few ASCS races this year. Another move is to get him some time on asphalt tracks - which he will do when he attends a NASCAR school at the Atlanta Motor Speedway in February.
“For a living, I'd rather be on asphalt. I just don't think there's enough money to make a really good living racing on dirt,” Howland said. “With NASCAR, the door that they would take you is only so big - early to mid-20s. Once you go over that edge, you're out of luck.
“That's why we've got to hit the big shows, the national races to get my name out there. We have to do the best we can, and maybe someone will eventually say, ‘hey Bryan, come drive my car.'”
“He's just a nice, quiet, mild mannered, easy going young man - until you put him in a race car,” said Tom Taber, who runs the Patriot Sprint Group, the Central New York-based dirt-track racing circuit on which Howland is a star. “He's (only) aggressive when he needs to be.”
The lone item that betrays the fact that Howland might be an aspiring professional race car driver and not just a Cayuga CC student is the colorful t-shirt he's wearing underneath his jacket. Looking past the gaudy colors, one can make out the sloping wings of a dirt-track sprint car and the logo of the PSG.
But the shirt could just as easily have an image of Howland, a 2005 graduate of Union Springs High School, who seems to be the 2006 poster boy for the PSG.
Taber said there's a good reason why Howland was one of the most talked-about drivers at a recent dirt car convention.
Even though he didn't win any races, he was the 2004 rookie of the year. In 2005, he topped that by winning the points championship.
Howland drove his No. 51 car, backed financially by Filtrec Corp., his father's business, to four PSG wins and one title at a national series event in Michigan. He earned almost $20,000 in his breakout season.
A poll recently ranked him as North America's 10th-best driver in the 360-cubic inch engine class, which is the second-most powerful engine used in sprint cars.
For some, that kind of attention could lead to a bit of ego-inflation.
But for Howland, who saw many of his Union Springs classmates head off on traditional paths to work or college, the success serves as positive reinforcement that he made the right choice by pursuing a non-traditional career.
“Everybody pushes me to go as far as I can,” Howland said. “We have a lot of people who help us out and want me to (do well). I've never heard anybody say we should slow down.”
One of those people has been Howland's father, John, who has invested hundreds of thousands of dollars and perhaps an equal amount of sweat equity in his son's passion.
Some of the major expenses include multiple cars, which can cost upwards of $50,000 and a 40-foot tractor-trailer that sleeps seven and transports the cars from race to race.
“As long as he continues to perform, we're gonna continue to do whatever it takes to get to the point where he can get a ride,” John Howland said. “I don't want to be a car owner forever. I'd just as soon be able to go to a race and watch him.”
Now that he's made a name for himself in the northern U.S., Howland, who's just days away from his first event of 2006 (the three-day American Sprint Car Series season opener in Tampa, Fla. from Jan. 26-29) knows this year's challenge is a little trickier than just being the fastest car in the 30-lap, 45-minute races he enters.
“Hopefully we can knock down some big sponsors and it will carry us a little bit farther,” he said. “Right now we're pretty much at our limits financially.”
The team has already taken one step in raising Howland's profile: attending this week's event in Florida, which should be the first of a few ASCS races this year. Another move is to get him some time on asphalt tracks - which he will do when he attends a NASCAR school at the Atlanta Motor Speedway in February.
“For a living, I'd rather be on asphalt. I just don't think there's enough money to make a really good living racing on dirt,” Howland said. “With NASCAR, the door that they would take you is only so big - early to mid-20s. Once you go over that edge, you're out of luck.
“That's why we've got to hit the big shows, the national races to get my name out there. We have to do the best we can, and maybe someone will eventually say, ‘hey Bryan, come drive my car.'”
