Chowchilla High’s Austin Van Hoff gets first win at Merced Speedway

As Austin Van Hoff dodged spinning cars and worked his way to the front of the pack in Merced Speedway’s Hobby Stock main event Sunday night, his father’s words kept playing over and over in his head.

“Be patient and things will go your way,” is what veteran driver Jack Van Hoff told his 17-year-old son.

In his second full season of racing, the Chowchilla High School senior scored his first victory. He is the second high school student in two weeks to beat a field of experienced drivers. Merced’s Cody Parker won the previous week.

“It was still unbelievable when we got home and unloaded the car,” Austin Van Hoff said. “Growing up, I watched my dad win and now he was in the pits watching me win.”

Jack Van Hoff hung up his helmet in 2008. He won the Tim Post Memorial 50-lap Street Stock event, and drove in three different divisions that year. When he moved up to the modified stock car division, he found costs to be high, so he retired to nurture his son’s racing goals.

The father and son found a Camaro stock car in Madera and brought it home to set it up for Merced Speedway. It was ready to race for the 2014 season, and the Van Hoff name returned to the lineup at Merced and Chowchilla speedways.

“I looked up to my dad as a race driver. My aunt, Cindy Briggs, also raced in the Street Stock division. So racing is always something I wanted to do,” Austin Van Hoff said.

The elder Van Hoff explained his own racing methodology to his son.

“Try two laps on the bottom (inside lane) of the track, two in the middle lane and two on top,” Jack Van Hoff said. “Then pick the one that the car goes fastest in.”

Austin Van Hoff did just that, and went on to win the race. Last week’s winner, Parker, tangled with Sonora’s Kevin Joaquin, and both cars went to the rear of the field. Van Hoff was then too fast for them to catch.

At Chowchilla High School, Van Hoff is setting goals to further his education in Agricultural Business. He is in the FFA and shows pigs. Van Hoff sells the pigs they raise for meat. It is only fitting that Hobby Stocks are often referred to as “Pigs on Ice” as they squirm and slide through the turns of a racetrack.

“I can understand the saying – when a track gets dry and slick like Chowchilla did on ‘Fair Night’, cars were sliding everywhere,” he said. “I tried to avoid all the crashes and wound up getting collected in one of them.”

It is actually the pigs that keep the Van Hoffs in racing.

“The first year, I got attached to the pigs and it was hard to sell them off,” Van Hoff explained. “Then, we put half the money we get from selling the pigs towards the race car and we bank the other half. So, the pigs now sponsor the race car. I feel better about that.”

Weekly Wrap Up

Paul Stone drove an ailing race car to victory in the IMCA Modified Stock Car main event Sunday night at Merced Speedway. Stone, from Winton, survived a third-turn pileup, then went on to take on veteran Merced racer Bob Williamson, who finished second.

Mark Odgers of Mariposa kept his car tight to the inside of the track to outrun Merced’s Dwayne Short and win the IMCA SportMod feature event. Short battled Odgers most of the race, then had to contend with Josh Hensley, who emerged from the pack and snatched second with two laps to go.

This Sunday At Merced Speedway

The IMCA Modified and SportMod divisions highlight the program that includes Hobby Stocks, Mini-Stocks and Dwarf Cars on Sunday evening. Merced Speedway is inside the Merced County Fairgrounds, 900 Martin Luther King Jr. Way. Admission is $12 for adults, $10 for senior citizens and $8 for children 6-12. A family four-pack of tickets admits two children and two adults for $32. Racing begins at 6 p.m. on Sunday. The grandstand opens at 4:30 p.m.

This story was originally published July 31, 2015 at 4:22 PM with the headline "Chowchilla High’s Austin Van Hoff gets first win at Merced Speedway."