By Mike Mahaney, as told to Mandee Pauch

After growing up struggling to find the balance between school, farming, and racing, the young gun out of King Ferry, NY, Mike Mahaney was finally able to make the move and follow his dreams to become a full-time race car driver.

Mahaney, better known as “Magic Mike,” now races big block modifieds and sprint cars all across the Northeast. This is his story.

I was going to the races before I was even born. 

My mom, Kathy, was carrying me in her belly along with fuel jugs in the pit area while helping my dad, Jim. The night I was born, my dad was supposed to be racing at Penn Can Speedway in Susquehanna, PA, and believe it or not, he didn’t go, so he was there when I was born.

When I was little, I used to sit in the grandstands with my grandmother because my mom was always in the pits working on my dad’s car.

Because it was close to home, I watched my dad race at Fulton Speedway in New York more than any other track. I enjoy when I get to race there because it’s one of the most special places to me because of that. It’s probably one of the best places for good racing.

Starting Out

My dad put me in a microd when I was 8 years old—and he was disappointed because I was really slow. 

Around the age of 10, I started racing slot cars and RC cars with my buddy Devon. I really enjoyed being able to set up the car between the runs and everything. It really got me into the whole technical side of racing which is my favorite part, other than actually driving.

When I was growing up, we always had this lawnmower racing league in my community that raised money for charity. I remember one year we raised as much as $15,000. 

The adults raced the lawnmowers and the kids raced go-karts. I won a bunch of those races and started begging my dad to get me into a more "real" division like go-karts. He suggested slingshots for the roll cage. 

Meanwhile, my dad was driving a small block modified at Fulton Speedway weekly. He stayed so busy on the farm that I had to eventually learn how to prepare his car for the track, do the maintenance, and scale it for him—all at 13 years old. The more I did that, I really wanted to be in the driver’s seat, as well, so I could see the difference all the work I was doing on the car was making.

My dad is the hardest working man I know and he was always pushing me to work harder for everything. He told me if I wanted to race I had to save up money to buy a slingshot. I found a used slingshot for like $4,500 and saved up enough money working on the farm. But when we went to pick it up, he paid for it. Then I had all the money I saved up to actually put tires on it and fuel in it and keep it going.

We were pretty successful in the slingshot. We won well over 60 races and four championships over the course of three years at New York's Paradise Speedway. I was winning almost every week—and the micro sprint guys took notice. I got a ride in a 270 micro, ran well in that, and then won a championship in my only season in a 600 micro.

That same year we got into a crate sportsman. For my 16th birthday, my dad surprised me with an Olsen car with an open sportsman motor in it. I’m pretty sure the crankshaft broke the third time I ran it and we finished the season on a borrowed motor.

The following year we got a crate motor. But the crate division had so much crashing and there was so much to it—with such little horsepower—we didn’t really enjoy it. We got a couple wins but we just weren’t having much fun.

I talked to Charley Davis, my dad’s previous car owner, whose car was sitting in the shop in pieces. I asked him if he’d let me drive it if I helped put it together and he agreed.

Once we got the car put together we got to run it at Dundee—my first time in a 358-modified. I was 17. At the end of that year, it was pretty overwhelming. We were running the 358-modified, sportsman, 600cc micro sprint, 270cc micro sprint, and slingshot. Three nights a week of racing and we were running five different divisions. That’s when I started to really get used to preparing and racing cars all the time, which is what led me to what I do now. 

It’s all I do. I go from one track to the next, from one shop to the next.

Farmer By Day, Race Car Driver By Night

Farming is always busy at the same time race season gets busy, so it’s really tough. 

The planting and harvesting season are when all of our special events go on. So, in order for me to race in my dad’s equipment, we had to have the farm work done first. He always kept beating it into my head that the farm came first. We couldn’t afford to race if we didn’t get the farm work done. 

To be honest, I was always competitive and cared more about the racing than I did farming. More often than not he’d let me off early to go race. Eventually, it got to the point where we were doing so much racing that my parents and I both felt that it wasn’t enough to just work on the farm to pay for the cars. We needed an additional external income. 

At that time, I didn’t really have any sponsors, so I went out and got some other part-time jobs.

When I was in high school my life revolved around basketball. When I graduated from high school, I wanted to try out for my college team at Alfred State. The coach told me if I wanted to go to my races I’d miss practices and games and I’d never get to play, so I gave it up. 

The Balance

With basketball behind me, I juggled a combination of racing, school and work for the next several years, and it wasn’t easy.

I would come home from work completely drained and exhausted and wasn’t able to focus 100 percent on racing, so I was really discouraged. One night I even fell asleep at the wheel while driving home. I would be so tired from working all the time that I wasn’t able to get the cars ready or focus when I got to the track. 

I moved from one company to another, trying to find the right fit for balancing work and racing. But, eventually, I started building shocks for people. It kept me in the race shop, so I was able to do my job and get my cars prepared, and as my experience grew, so did my business—which, in turn, allowed me to focus more on my racing career.

The Breakthrough

I showed up at Fonda Speedway in 2012 and won the opener in Charley Davis’ car. We went on to win five other really big events that year. Between those six events, we’d won over $40,000. That got me a lot of attention in the racing world and I started getting rides.

Hopping into a car that I didn’t build or work on was a whole new experience for me. That was hard. I actually struggled for a while to learn how to drive other people’s cars.

I’m thankful to have gotten the opportunity to drive for Charley Davis, Bob Finley, Jim Shear, and Sheryl Brady with the B&S Motorsports No.77x; Skip Seymour with the North Norwich Motors No. 4 car; Ed and Karen at Eastern Rigging; the Norm’s Save Station 357 team; the Breitenstein family No.14 car; Doug Emery’s No. 33 sprint car; and, of course, I’m thankful for my parents who got me started in the first place.

Super DIRTcar Series Rookie

We only ever ran the Super DIRTcar Series races when they were in the area, with our own equipment. I didn’t have a lot of experience on the tour and the Buzz Chew team was just getting into dirt racing. They had been running Troyers on asphalt and were looking for someone with good experience with a Troyer on dirt. 

They interviewed me, and I got the deal.

We started our first year together in 2016. That was when I finally got to run the whole tour, which I had never done before. Not only did we get to run the series, but I got to go with premium equipment. Showing up to the track with chrome rub rails on the car was quite intimidating to me at first. 

I don’t think I drove to my potential to begin with because there was so much pressure.

Growing Together

As a team, we grew really well together. We both had a lot to learn when we started out. I had a lot to learn, especially, about being forceful with what I wanted out of the race car. I had a hard time asking for specific things on the car when I was just excited to even have the opportunity. 

I was just happy to be there. How can you ask for more? Then you start to feel all of this pressure because you need to perform. It took a while for us to really gel together and understand one another.

In the middle of 2017, we were racing a lot but not coming home with the results we wanted. We took a break and regrouped. There is nothing harder for a racer than to sit out of a big event, but we had our work cut out for us in the shop as well. After that, we came back in full force and clinched our first victory together. 

Now I feel like each time we show up with a little more confidence.

2018 Plans

Our schedule is very hard for me to describe to people in just a few words. 

We don’t race for points. We don’t race if we’re not ready. We show up to big events trying to win them. When our cars are ready to go and there’s a race coming up that we feel we can win, we go. I’m thankful our groups are willing to work together so that we can race on a fairly consistent basis.

The races that I plan on going to are on the schedule on my website.

Most people can say they’re running a specific series or at a certain track but that’s not what I’m doing this year. We’ll run about 60-70 percent of the Super DIRTcar Series races this year.

We’ll chase the money and look to put on a show.