A Superbike winner and his daughter navigate racing sports cars together
· Yahoo Sports
ELKHART LAKE – If you’ve taught your child to drive the family car or learned with a parent in the passenger seat, it’s a memorable experience.
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A little scary. Perhaps contentious at times. And, with any luck, rewarding when it’s done.
Now imagine having a daughter who doesn’t want to just drive on the highway but rather to race sports cars at the highest level, with you as her coach and co-driver and the lessons continuing year after year after year.
“I don’t like her to hear it, but I’m living a dream,” said Larry Pegram, a former Superbike racer who started a second racing career on four wheels and races with daughter Riley. “We have guys coming up that are emotional, ‘I can’t believe you get to race with your daughter. I wish I could do that.’”
He smiled proudly as he spoke, seated beside her.
“But also I’ve been honest with her,” Pegram said. “Like, I can get you 90% there. The last 10%, nobody can get you there. That’s you.”
The Pegrams are still well within that 90% range. Although Larry has spent 48 of his 53 years racing something, he’s still learning about the intricacies of their Honda Civic R in the IMSA Pilot Challenge Series and about his abilities.
After Superbike, Larry raced some in Star Mazda alongside future IndyCar drivers but that was just “jump in … and go for broke.” This project is different.
Larry insisted his daughters learn to drive go-karts before they got on the road. Riley, now 21, caught the racing bug, whereas Sophie, 17, didn’t.
Riley started competing in karts at 16 and did so for two seasons before jumping into a full-sized race car, with no testing or time in a simulator, at Sebring. Then after doing a regional level endurance race together, Larry and Riley decided that should be their path.
The duo from Hebron, Ohio, made their Michelin Pilot Chellenge debut in 2024 at Road America, the site of Larry’s first AMA Superbike victory in 2009, and then took Pegram Racing full time in the series last year.
“Two years ago we showed up here and we look like a monkey trying to play football,” he said. “And now we’re still not looking great, but we’re doing way better than we did then.”
Riley qualified ninth among 14 TCR entries for the Road America 120 on the 4-mile course. The race is scheduled for 12:50 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 1, as the top support event for the 6-hour WeatherTech Series Motul SportsCar Endurance Grand Prix the following day.
The vision for Pegram Racing is for it to advance within IMSA, for Larry to step back and Riley to become the team owner as well as a driver. Her dreams are big.“I’d like to eventually be the pro driver in the car, maybe have multiple cars under the team, maybe have a [WeatherTech Championship GTD] Pro and a GTD car as well,” she said. “I think GTP is the ultimate goal for me.
“I just love endurance racing. I think it’s the best form of racing. If I got other opportunities while I’m young, I definitely would take them, but I would still try to keep my foundation here.”
For now, though, Larry and Riley will keep trying to improve their car and their skills while balancing their roles as teammates, teacher/student and father/daughter.
“She’s making up for a life of experience, and sometimes I have to sit her down and say, ‘Hey, you’re not supposed to be where you’re at and you’re doing good.’ And then there’s other times when I say, ‘Hey, you need to go ahead and go.’ Like, ‘Dig down, time to dig deep.’
“Sometimes I need to push her and sometimes I need to let her realize … you will get there, but it takes time.”
The balance may be easier for Riley than for Larry, she said.
“Sometimes I have to wake up in the morning and really feel out what kind of vibe he’s gonna be that day, and sometimes one little thing in the day can switch it instantly,” Riley said. “Like at Laguna [Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca], when he wrecked, it was immediately from coach to dad.
“Before I got in the car, he’s like, this weekend you have to focus on everything and you’re not getting on your phone, and we’re gonna do good this weekend. And then he crashes and it’s like, It’s OK. We’ll fix it. … It’s just a different situation than most people in racing deal with, for sure.”
A few times Riley has worked with other coaches, most recently when Larry was forced out of the car after suffering a broken back in testing in December at Daytona. They brought in sports car veteran Mario Farnbacher, a two-time GTD champion.
“It was really nice, especially at the beginning of the year, to have someone else’s input and see a different technique of coaching,” Riley said. “And I think it was really helpful at the beginning of the year, for sure, but ... most of the time, he just wants to be the coach.”
And the teammate. The proud parent, too.
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: A Superbike winner and his daughter navigate racing sports cars together