{"id":22496,"date":"2015-06-23T21:27:56","date_gmt":"2015-06-23T21:27:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/karnac.com\/flanews\/?p=22496"},"modified":"2015-06-23T21:29:46","modified_gmt":"2015-06-23T21:29:46","slug":"bobby-sears-still-going-strong-at-70-at-new-smyrna-speedway","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/karnac.com\/flanews\/front-page-news\/bobby-sears-still-going-strong-at-70-at-new-smyrna-speedway\/","title":{"rendered":"BOBBY SEARS STILL GOING STRONG AT 70 AT NEW SMYRNA SPEEDWAY"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"BobbyAlthough his driving days have ended, car owner Bobby Sears is still a weekly
\nfixture at New Smyrna Speedway.\u00a0 Sears will turn 71 later this year and he
\nshows no signs of slowing down as his race team has already scored several
\nwins in both the Super Late Model and Pro Late Model divisions with new driver
\nBrad May.
\nSears is doing it all without any sponsorship whatsoever so far this season
\nand he says it makes it tough being competitive.\u00a0 “Building, maintaining,
\nrepairing the race cars and engines… that’s what I do and I do all of it
\npretty much myself,” says Sears.\u00a0 “Tires are where I could use the help.\u00a0 If I
\ncould get a sponsor willing to put up $1247 per month, I could put a new set
\nof tires once a month on both cars and it would help greatly, first of all in
\nbeing able to race, and secondly keeping up with the competition each week.”
\nhe says.<\/p>\n

Actually, the competition would rather see Sears’ machines on old
\ntires since May has won two of the four Super Late Model races held at New
\nSmyrna this year and four times as of mid-June in the Pro Late Models.
\nSears began his racing career at New Smyrna in 1983 driving a Volkswagen in
\nthe Mini Stock class.\u00a0 At the time, Sears operated a repair shop in Maitland
\ncalled “The Old Volks Home.”\u00a0 Try as he might, the VW had trouble competing
\nagainst the faster Ford Pintos back in the day, so midway in the 1984 season
\nSears purchased a Pinto from Jerry and Stan Eads after Stan moved up to the
\nLate Model class.\u00a0 Sears went on to win his first of many point championships
\nat New Smyrna in 1984 then went on to dominate the Mini Stock class for
\nseveral years.\u00a0 He built a second Pinto so he could use one at New Smyrna and
\nthe other exclusively at Orlando SpeedWorld.\u00a0 During one season in the early
\n1990’s when Clyde Hart operated his tracks “52 weeks year,” Sears won over 60
\nfeatures between both speed plants.\u00a0 His competition were no slouches either
\nand included the likes of Gene Van Alstine, Richard Newton, Jerry Symons,
\nJimmy “T” Trevarthen, and a host of others.
\nIn 1994, Sears moved to racing in the Limited Late Models and continued
\nwinning features and track titles until he finally retired from driving for
\ngood in 2002.\u00a0 Not one to actually “retire,” Sears began fielding Late Models
\nas an owner and in over 13 years has only had three drivers behind the wheel
\nof his machines.<\/p>\n

Michael Williams ran Sears’ car the first year he was an
\nowner before Williams went to the potent South 40 Race Team that he helped
\nmanage as well as drive for.\u00a0 At that point, Sears decided to give young
\ndriver Rich Clouser a shot at driving a Late Model after Clouser had been
\ndominating the Bomber\/Super Stock classes for several years.
\nThe team of Sears and Clouser clicked almost immediately and they went on to
\nwin numerous races and several championships along the way.\u00a0 But even the best
\nof partnerships can dissolve eventually and that happened late last year when
\nSears and Clouser decided to part ways as Clouser was becoming more involved
\nwith supporting the racing efforts of his two children while cutting back on
\nhis own racing.
\nSears looked around and found a driver that had shown flashes of brilliance
\nover the years but had never really gotten the chance to be in a good ride
\nfull time.\u00a0 Brad May took over the Sears cars and the new partnership was fast
\nfrom the beginning.\u00a0 “I knew where Bobby was coming from,” says May.\u00a0 “I did
\nmy best running my own cars without much sponsorship, so I know how hard it is
\nand to be immensely successful like Bobby and try to do it on your own.” he
\nsays.
\nSears, a long time mechanic, both self-employed and later with Fields BMW,
\nstill works at Fields on the drive line greeting customers and test driving
\ncars to check for problems so the mechanics have a heads-up on what problems
\nexist with the vehicle.\u00a0 At the track, Sears is assisted by his son Danny who
\njust turned 50 and occasionally at the bigger races by his youngest son,
\n47-year old Steve.
\nAt 37, May has been racing since he was seven years old.\u00a0 Starting in Quarter
\nMidgets, May raced the small cars until he reached the maximum age for Quarter
\nMidget racing at 16.\u00a0 During his time in those machines, May won a number of
\nchampionships at Central Florida tracks plus two National titles.\u00a0 In 1995,
\nMay skipped the lower classes and moved right into running Limited Late Models
\nat New Smyrna.\u00a0 Although he never had the funds to race for a season-long
\npoints championship, he did win the World Series of Asphalt Stock Car Racing
\nLimited Late Model titles in 1996, 1997 and 1999.\u00a0 May and his wife Carrie
\nlive in Oviedo and have a seven-year-old son Carson.\u00a0 May and his father
\noperate May Construction Company.
\nMay and his best friend Patrick Thomas, who himself is having quite a year in
\nthe Sportsman class at New Smyrna, have been racing together since the days of
\nthe Quarter Midgets and continue to support each other at the race track.
\nThey never have raced much against each other as each has usually been running
\na different class than the other.\u00a0 “That’s probably a good thing,” laughs May.
\nFor the first time since they started their racing careers, both May and
\nThomas won on the same night a few weeks back, then duplicated the feat about
\na month later.
\nSo, if you are looking to get the name of your business on the side of some
\nfast race cars and see it gracing victory lane on many nights, you just might
\nwant to give Bobby Sears a call.\u00a0 “I don’t know what I’d do if I didn’t have a
\ncar to bring to the track… I hope it never comes to that,” says Mr. bobby
\nSears.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Although his driving days have ended, car owner Bobby Sears is still a weekly fixture at New Smyrna Speedway.\u00a0 Sears will turn 71 later this […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"publish_to_discourse":"","publish_post_category":"","wpdc_auto_publish_overridden":"","wpdc_topic_tags":"","wpdc_pin_topic":"","wpdc_pin_until":"","discourse_post_id":"","discourse_permalink":"","wpdc_publishing_response":"","wpdc_publishing_error":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[45,22,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22496","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-archives","category-featured","category-front-page-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/karnac.com\/flanews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22496","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/karnac.com\/flanews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/karnac.com\/flanews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/karnac.com\/flanews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/karnac.com\/flanews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22496"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/karnac.com\/flanews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22496\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22500,"href":"https:\/\/karnac.com\/flanews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22496\/revisions\/22500"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/karnac.com\/flanews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22496"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/karnac.com\/flanews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22496"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/karnac.com\/flanews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22496"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}