Getting on Track

Tim Enoch once sold his motorcycle to pay for his hospital bills after a motocross accident.

He once sold his pickup truck to raise enough money just to try out to be a race car driver.

He once moved from Mission Viejo to Tennessee to compete in a racing series, and while he was there he lived in a house that lacked a floor and window frames.

“I’ve been in debt up to my eyeballs the last four years,” he said.

But Enoch, 27, remains hopeful his drive and talent will continue to carry him toward an eventual career in racing.

“It’s not a poor man’s sport,” Enoch said. “I come from pretty humble means.”

Two days before Thanksgiving last year, his mother, Caroline, died of cancer.

“She never gave up, she never quit for us,” said Enoch, whose older brother, Trevor, lives in Los Angeles. “She’s an inspiration in everything I do. I dedicate pretty much all my racing to her and what she meant in my life. We were really close.

“She’s with me all the time. Every time I get in the car, I think about her. She’s helped me to do my best.”

His mother used to race cars on slalom courses in parking lots in the late 1960s. His father, Gary, who has a small auto repair business in Lake Forest, was a two-time Formula Vee champion in the 1970s.

With one race remaining, Saturday at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, Enoch has a chance to win the Star Mazda Series’ Best Western Championship. He trails Sacramento’s Joey Hand by eight points. Enoch is also in third place, eight points out of second, in the West Division Championship Series. Saturday’s race counts toward both series.

The open-wheel Formula Mazda that Enoch drives is about two levels removed from champ cars, Enoch’s ultimate goal.

The series winner receives a test with Factory BMW for its endurance team in sports car racing, and there are also Indy Lights and Toyota Atlantic tests.

And should Enoch falter, he’ll still have a chance to be selected to an additional test session.

“There are a lot of benefits that come out of this series,” said Enoch, who turned a 17.0-second lap (105.88 mph) on the half-mile at Irwindale, the fastest of any series driver, back in July. “A lot of eyes get opened because we get on television and we get to race all around the country.

“I’ve talked to a couple of teams about next year.”

Another driver for Valley Motor Center in Van Nuys is Chris Emanuel, 50, of Huntington Beach. Unlike Enoch, Emanuel is a mid-pack driver without a serious future.

“When you see [Enoch’s] car and it has an oversteer to it, or gets loose on him, he catches the car real quick and corrects it,” said Emanuel, the 1997 Masters Champion. “He has to have real good eye-hand coordination and real good reactions.

“He handles traffic well. I’ve tried to tuck in behind him a couple times when he lapped me, and I can’t run with him. That’s just driving skill.”

Enoch rode motocross until he broke his hip, collarbone and wrist in a 1991 accident. He was 19 and didn’t race for 1 1/2 years. “I didn’t know what I was going to do,” he said. “I didn’t know what direction, if any, my racing career was going to go.”

After graduating from Mission Viejo High, Enoch attended Saddleback College and later Cal State San Marcos, hoping to become an elementary school teacher. He is still 25 units shy of his BA in sociology but works as an assistant site coordinator for a Saddleback Valley Unified School District daycare program at Portola Hills Elementary School.

He raced shifter karts for a year until money became a problem.

But he thought he found an answer in an ad for a Bridgestone F2000 Horizon Motorsports Drivers Search in Canada. Candidates had to pay their own way just to try out.

“I sold my truck, everything I had, to do it,” Enoch said. “I never wanted to wonder, ‘What if?’ ”

Ninety-eight aspirants tested, and Enoch was one of three chosen to drive in the F2000 series. He finished second in the series, and by virtue of beating the other two driver candidates, Enoch received a $30,000 scholarship to race professionally in 1996. He was on his way. After a few mediocre 1996 races in Formula Dodge, he moved to Franklin, Tenn., and won the 1997 title, edging Newport Beach’s Alex Gurney.

Both were selected to the 1997 Team Green Academy, an invitation-only, three-day test session for 25 top young drivers. Enoch was rated as one of the top five there.

He ran a partial season in the 1998 Skip Barber Formula Dodge Series in the Midwest, finishing fifth despite competing in only 10 of 14 races. He was invited to the 1998 Skip Barber “Big Scholarship Shootout.” The winner, chosen subjectively by a panel of judges, was to receive a full ride in the Barber Dodge Pro Series.

But then his mother died on Nov. 24, and Enoch had second thoughts about attending the weeklong event, which began the first week of December.

“I wasn’t sure I would be mentally ready for the challenge,” he said. “And I didn’t want to leave the family.”

But he did leave the family. And he was quickest among 10 drivers in three of the four sessions at the shootout. However, he was bypassed for a driver six years younger, who received the $175,000 scholarship in the Barber Dodge Series.

Enoch believes age was the deciding factor, and the judging panel specifically wanted a young, quick driver. In fact, it passed over several drivers, not just him.

“At the end of the year, I didn’t know what I was going to do,” Enoch said. “It was a down point in my life.”

Two months later, Enoch hooked up with Valley Motor Center, a team owned by Gary Rodrigues, who is also the series coordinator.

“He intuitively knows what to feel in the car,” Rodrigues said. “He absolutely has a career in front of him.”