It’s Ryan Bernal’s dream to race in NASCAR, to race against the
big boys. At age 13, the Hollister resident has been driving some
form of a race car for the last seven years, from quarter midget
race cars to now modified midget race cars. Next year, he’ll be
racing sprint cars.
It’s Ryan Bernal’s dream to race in NASCAR, to race against the big boys.
At age 13, the Hollister resident has been driving some form of a race car for the last seven years, from quarter midget race cars to now modified midget race cars. Next year, he’ll be racing sprint cars.
“He’s basically learned all he can learn in the modified midgets,” said father Rick Bernal.
An eighth-grader and three-sport athlete at Maze Middle School, Ryan recently powered his way to first place in the three-state, three-weekend Best of the West series, which added to his already lengthy list of accolades.
Ryan is a 13-time state title holder, a two-time winter national champion, and a three-time grand national champion.
Averaging speeds of 81 miles per hour, Ryan Bernal just wants to race the big boys.
The fact is, he’s already racing them.
When Ryan Bernal was the ripe old age of 3, his father, who raced quarter midgets when he was a kid, took his son to a race in Morgan Hill.
Like any kid at his age, Ryan saw the speed, the action, and knew he wanted to try it.
“I told him I wanted to drive one, and that’s pretty much how it started,” Ryan said.
Ryan received his very first quarter midget race car for his fourth birthday, and while some youngsters were still learning how to ride a bike, Ryan could literally drive circles around them.
“I didn’t really know what would come,” he said. “But I thought I’d be doing it for a while.”
Similar to a 16-year-old learning to drive for the first time, Ryan, 4 at the time, could likely be seen driving in an out of cones at parking lots in Morgan Hill. Unlike 16-year-olds, though, Ryan graduated from parking lots to race tracks.
He took training and certification classes, learning proper driving technique and passing etiquette, and was on the race track once again, this time for his first race.
At the age of 5, Ryan began what should be a long career at the Baylands Raceway Park in San Jose.
“My first race, I got third,” he said. “Other drivers, they had been racing for a little while. It was really fun. It was a great adrenaline rush.”
Ryan said he was a little scared the first time he raced, and although he says he still gets some butterflies before his races even today, it’s probably nothing compared to what his competition is feeling, competition that is twice his age.
Since he was 10-years-old, Ryan has been racing open-wheeled modified midgets with 600cc engines. The cars are equipped with a wing stabilizer that keeps the four wheels hugging the turns of the dirt oval tracks Ryan races on.
And recently, Ryan has been racing dirt oval tracks up and down the western seaboard. As part of the Best of the West series, Ryan raced twice in Deming, Wash., twice in Sacramento, and twice in Bullhead City, Ariz.
He has also been racing against drivers whose average age is between 21- and 25-years-old, according to Rick Bernal, and the Best of the West was no different.
In Washington, Ryan had engine problems the first two days of the races. After qualifying for the main event through another race, Ryan was forced to start in 20th. He managed to finish ninth, and he sat 18th in the standings after Washington.
One week later in Sacramento, Ryan rebounded in a big way, finishing second in Friday’s race, first in Saturday’s race, and vaulted from 18th to fifth in the standings with only Arizona remaining.
“Ryan was fifth at that point, and needed to have a perfect weekend (in Arizona),” Rick said.
Ryan didn’t disappoint.
In the heat race, he started 10th and finished first, giving him 18 points.
After he struggled in his next race in Arizona – as he started 10th again but finished sixth – the 13-year-old was fast enough to enter the Dash for Cash, which pitted the four fastest drivers of the night against one another for points and $100.
It was there that Ryan clinched the Best of the West championship in style, taking first in the Dash for Cash and pocketing a fast one hundred.
But with the main event still to come later that night, Ryan was unaware of his championship standing.
“We didn’t know it, but he already clinched the championship,” Rick said. “They didn’t tell us.”
But to relieve any stress the Bernal’s may have been going through at the time, Ryan took first in the main event. Said Rick, “They clocked him at 81 miles per hour, average speed.”
And he did it against adults. Ryan said it’s pretty cool racing against older drivers, even though sometimes they’d try to intimidate him.
Clearly holding his own against the big boys, though, Ryan has won five main events in the last five weeks, and was recently OK’d to drive a late model stock car.
“They would try to intimidate me and I’d do the same thing right back to them,” Ryan said. “Some don’t like that I’m racing against them and what age I’m at. They don’t like to be beaten by me. They don’t like to be beaten by a 13-year-old.”
