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Off to the races
Lawnmower races at Charles County Fair Sept. 20
Wednesday, Sept. 16, 2009
 Click here to enlarge this photo Photos courtesy of WALLY BENDER
Kenny Williams, left, of Pennsylvania and Wally Bender compete in a lawnmower race earlier this year.
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Ask most lawnmower racers and they'll tell you it all started innocently enough. They saw a flier or went to a race. They have an old mower and started tinkering with it.
"Once you've been on the track, you get hooked," said racer Wally Bender, who is currently second in the of national point rankings, right behind Jason Brown, a racer from Clements.
Manny Torres, president of the local lawnmower racing association, was another racer lured into the sport.
"I witnessed a race at a local gathering," said Torres, who lives in Port Deposit in Cecil County. "I started asking questions and was hooked."
Torres still races the 1977 Hubby mower he started with in 2001. The thing about racing mowers is the freedom.
"It's experimental," said Torres, who writes the rule book used by racers. "There is a lot of room to experiment."
There is also America's unquenchable thirst for not only competition but with speed as well — and maybe a bit of the oddness too.
"Americans are obsessed with speed," Torres said. "[Spectators] coming out to the fairgrounds are going to see something different."
One mower got up to 82 miles an hour; Bender said he's seen mowers going about 60 mph.
With safety paramount, the first rule of lawnmower racing is that the blades come off, racers drive in full protective gear; the mowers are lowered closer to the ground and have brakes.
It also fills the need for speed without the need for a trust fund.
"It's a lot cheaper," said Bender of lawnmower racing. "You can take a lawnmower and do your own work and be competitive in the field … [but] there are some people out there who have $4,000, $5,000 tied up in a mower."
Bryantown resident Bender put together a race-ready mower quickly when he first started with the sport five or six years ago.
Before racing, Bender was into lawn mower tractor pulls and was always on the lookout for mower parts that could be scavenged, cleaned up, reworked and made road ready.
Bender said he's even got parts from mowers destined for the landfill.
According to Torres, drivers come from various backgrounds, but many have racing in their past.
"We have former go-cart racers, dirt bike racers, motocross …," he said. "[Racing lawnmowers] is more affordable."
Torres said a racer along with his two sons told him all three could race lawnmowers for the season for the cost of what it would take to put a racecar on the track for one event.
The local chapter, which holds races once a month at the home track in Havre de Grace, also provides entertainment for fundraisers, Torres said.
"It's not expensive to host a race," he explained. "It's a good event for fundraisers; we don't charge a lot to set up."
Racers helped raise $10,000 for Huntington's disease research and on Sept. 19 will race during an event for a Laurel fire department.
While the national point scoring is complete — Brown came in first with Bender in second place — racers at the Charles County Fairgrounds on Sunday are still vying for local rankings.
"You're gonna have a lot of fast racers that are going to be at this track," Bender said of the upcoming event.
"The competition is always right to the limit … it puts a lot of pressure on it, it's anybody's game."
Get your mower running
The DelMarVA Lawnmower Racing Association will hold its final race of the 2009 season at 1 p.m. Sept. 20 at the Charles County Fair. The DelMarVa group of the National Lawnmower Racing Association is the local chapter made up of members from Delaware, Maryland and Virginia.
Currently, four racers in the group are ranked in the top five positions nationally.
For more information, go to www.charlescountyfair.com or call 301-932-1234.
