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When Orrington’s Jay Robichaud got into racing, he hopped into his car and did exactly what his father, Jim, figured a fired-up 15-year-old would do.
In layman’s terms, he got in a bit of trouble. In the vernacular of stock car drivers everywhere … well … let’s let Jay tell you.
“I went over,” the now 19-year-old Jay said, detailing one in a series of spectacular miscues that highlighted his debut season, four summers ago.
“Going over,” you see, is rolling your race car. At 60 or 70 mph. With a freight train of other cars bearing down on you, brakes squealing, smoke rolling off rubber.
Jay Robichaud, now a top driver in the Sport Fours at Speedway 95 in Hermon, will tell you that’s not much fun.
And Jim Robichaud, Jay’s dad, car mechanic, fabricator and crew chief, will tell you (in the vernacular of fathers everywhere): I told you so.
“I saw it coming,” Jim said of that evening, Jay’s second as a driver.
“I watched him. Coming down the front straight, he was three wide, passed three or four cars,” Jim said, enjoying the recollection not because of what happened, but because of what Jay eventually learned from it.
“I looked over to another driver who was standing there – Charlie Peabody -and I said, `We’re gonna have a problem.’ And when he come out of number 2 three-wide, we see we did have a problem.”
Jim quickly ran to a wreck he could tell wasn’t serious, got help righting Jay’s car, and told his son to keep driving.
“My main thing was to get the fear,” Jim said. “There is nothing worse than someone sitting on the side, waiting and thinking about it.”
Two weeks later, the same thing happened, in the same place. The same result.
Track co-owner Alice Baker said the learning curve at Speedway 95 is pretty steep. And she said one key concept is really quite simple: “The faster you go around that track, the rounder it gets,” she said.
So, lying wheels-up, suspended in his safety harness for the second time in four weeks, a victim of youthful indiscretions and a rounder track than he counted on, Jay Robichaud had a bit of an epiphany.
“I was hanging upside-down, just thinking, `What am I doing here? I could be out somewhere else, but I’m over here on my roof.'”
And the real alternative?
“I decided to start listening to my dad,” Jay said. “I took his advice. And I’ve kept it on its wheels since then.”
And since then, the soft-spoken Robichaud will admit, he’s dracing might be more than merely a weekend diversion.
He’s fresh off his freshman year at the University of Maine, where he chose his major – mechanical engineering – in large part because it meshes with the auto racing industry so well.
Jay Robichaud is in this race for the long haul.
From novice to veteran
When Jay began racing at Speedway 95 four years ago, he was similar to many drivers – he’d grown up at the track, watching his dad race, after all – but different in one major way: He shouldn’t even have been there.
“Legally you’re supposed to be 16,” Jay said. “And you’re supposed to have a driver’s license.”
He wasn’t, and he didn’t.
But he had a learner’s permit, and he started racing in the Sport Four class with lofty goals and minimal skills.
“When you watch from the stands, it looks like it’s really easy,” he said. “But as soon as you get out there, you realize that you’re totally wrong. It’s completely different from what you think it is.”
Instead, Jay found out he had a lot to learn. Greg Markee, a spot ahead of Jay in the current Sport Four standings at Speedway 95, made his debut a couple months before his rival. He remembers a rambunctious youth who made early races an adventure.
“He bounced around a bit our first year,” Markee said. “I don’t think it was all his fault. He just couldn’t catch the luck.”
But Markee and points leader Chad Ashey of Frankfort give Robichaud one of the best compliments a driver can give a foe: He’s safe, dependable and fun to race.
“He’s the kind of guy that you could run side-by-side with, for lap after lap, withou worrying about him coming into you,” Ashey said.
But that doesn’t mean that he’s not competitive. Despite his age, Ashey said Robichaud gets the attention of other drivers.
“He’s plenty enough [of a] veteran and he’s a guy you’ve got to watch out for,” Ashey said. “He’ll pass you if you’re not careful. You make one mistake and he’ll go by you.”
Hoping for a break
Robichaud’s sparkling canary-and-blue car – it’s a Dodge Challenger inside, wrapped with the sharp lines of a Mitsubishi Eclipse body – is, with no doubt, a race car.
It’s got stickers from his sponsors – Brewer Eagles Club, Urquhart’s Machine Shop, VP Racing Fuels, Sign Language Graphics – and a couple of raked-back 18’s on the doors, just like the big boys.
But he points out that there isn’t much standing between his car and a street-legal hot rod, really.
Modifications in the Sport Four class are minimal: A safety cage is mandatory, and the right-front strut can be angled in to help the car corner better. The engine can be tweaked a bit. But other than that, it’s stock.
His car, built new (out of used components), would set you back about $7,000.
But Robichaud doesn’t want to stay in the Sport Four division forever. He wants to move up, into the faster (and more expensive) cars. Success with those cars, he figures, can pave his road to bigger, better things.
“My dream,” he says, echoing the words of nearly every 19-year-old racer with four years of experience under his belt, “is to drive in the higher levels, on TV and what-not.”
Charting a path to the future
Jim Robichaud has no doubt in his son’s ability. He’s seen a lot of drivers in his 22 years, and nearly grudgingly admits that his son has talent.
“I hate to say it, but he’s gonna be good,” Jim Robichaud says.
Jim is also a successful driver, in the higher-powered Super Street class at Speedway 95. For Jay’s first two years, Jim also had a Sport Four entry, so he’d race against his son.
Now that doesn’t happen, but the family rivalry is still a subject of some silent contention. Maybe that time Jim spun Jay en route to a win is the cause.
Or maybe it’s this: Jim has never, ever lost to Jay. And he wants to keep it that way when they meet again, which both say will happen eventually.
Jay, of course, has a different view of the matter.
“That’s probably my next goal, if I get a chance,” Jay said. “Just beat him once. So I can do it.”
If he reaches that goal, Jay’s got more in mind.
First is moving up in class. Pro Stock cars can cost $30,000 to $40,000 to build, but the rewards are better, too. There are more big paydays, more big events.
“And if that happens, I guess the next step [is to] probably just take a chance,” Jay said.
The chance is North Carolina, the hub of the auto racing world.
Jim figures Jay will do the driving. He’ll do the building.
“[We] see if somehow we can either race what we’ve got down there, or see whatever we can get into,” Jay said. “We need a lucky break, probably. It’s quite a dream, but we’ll see.”
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