Richard King’s garage doesn’t look like it should be the home of a 650-horsepower C5 Corvette, murdered out and with gold decals. It’s outlined with the type of stuff every home has, a stark contrast to the kind of insanity that lies ahead.
Richard quickly ditches the cleaning supplies and grins when I ask if this is normal.
“This is the calm version,” he says.
That’s where the story begins–not at the track, not in the paddock, but in the quiet, anxious hum of a garage where dreams beat back doubts. Holley LS Fest Texas is coming, and Richard is running the full Grand Champion program: autocross, drag race, track sprint and speed stop (3S). It’s a brutal gauntlet that demands more than one talent, and Richard’s the kind of competitor who doesn’t show up unless he plans to go for it.
But this weekend isn’t just about the events. It’s about the person walking into them. It’s about a driver who wants to prove something–to himself and to the world. It’s about the community that feels like home. And it’s about a race that’s still revealing its secrets.
This is a story about chasing a Grand Championship–and what that reveals about the man gunning for it all.
Richard is like a lot of us, someone who’s built a solid, satisfying career but still carries a part of himself that craves a different kind of challenge.
That part lives in the late nights, the creative projects, the places where failure is real and the stakes are personal. Racing is where he feels most alive, where failure is expected and rewarded with endless problems to solve. He’s not solely defined by one thing, but for what he reaches for when nobody is watching–the hard things, the creative things, the things that demand all of him.
When I ask him what he’s afraid of, he doesn’t hesitate.
“Fire,” he says. “I can hit a wall and have it fixed in a month, but I can’t bolt together ashes.”
Everything else? He’ll deal with it.
This year is different for him. New car. New power. New expectations. The Corvette is one and a half times more powerful than what he won with in 2023, and he’s still learning more about it every time he drives it.
“It’s such an unknown quantity to me still,” he says. “I got the car in January, and I’m learning it.”
But he trusts it. More than that, he respects it.
“It may look like a handful out there, but it’s consistent,” he says. “It doesn’t do dumb stuff.”
Consistency matters. When you’re trying to be a Grand Champion, it’s everything.
“What do you expect from the weekend?” I ask.
He pauses, almost holding back, like if he says it out loud, somehow it’s going to expose his ego, a part of him he guards well.
I press him a bit.
“I want to win,” he says.
Not because he needs validation, but because he believes in the work he’s put in–the hours, the late nights, the sacrifices. “Time is the other currency a lot of people don’t talk about,” he says.
And he wants to show something–to himself, to the community, to anyone watching.
“Never giving up means something.”
After work, Richard heads north through a 3-hour gauntlet of I-35 traffic to Dallas. His tow rig is simple: a pickup truck with an open trailer, Corvette strapped down. The Vette looks menacing.
Richard talks about the Grand Champion format, how it rewards versatility, how it punishes mistakes, how it forces you to be good everywhere instead of great in one place.
“You can’t win Grand Champion off one category,” he says. “But you can certainly lose it.”
He unloads and gets through tech quickly. There’s just enough daylight for a single course walk before darkness fills Texas Motor Speedway. This is my first glimpse of him switched into race mode: no noise, just cones, asphalt and inches.
In the fading light he was thinking through his first run.
Before we start, I hang back to let him walk ahead. From a few steps back he looked small out there, in a way that made the moment feel bigger than either of us had acknowledged. Walking alone through a sea of cones, using the last sips of light, tracing lines he could see. I snapped a photo, but the frame only caught a fraction of the moment.
“It may be one of those things where at least for my first run I might turn traction control up a couple of clicks. Just so like … I really want to send it, but I want a safety margin.”
That was the theme of the walk, inches, not feet. He pointed at cones, camber changes in the pavement, gravel patches–all the tiny details that separate a fast run from a fast mistake.
“I’m not moving feet, I’m moving inches,” he said.
He’s excited. But he’s also carrying something heavier. The memory of 2023, when he won the autocross portion. “It was my biggest win ever,” he says. It’s clear he’s speaking of deeper needs than winning.
This year, he’s not defending a title. He’s chasing something bigger: a complete performance across all four events. A performance that marks a defining point in his career.
He is chasing the Grand Championship.
If SCCA events feel like organized chess, Holley LS Fest feels like a street festival that happens to have timing lights. The paddock is a mix of pro builds, backyard science projects and everything between. The soundtrack is V8s, crowds and chaos.
This feels like home. Racers stop by, catching up. We run into SCCA Solo guys from nearby regions, and it’s like an autocross reunion.
This year, there’s a clear favorite.
Duke Langley is the odds-on pick to win Grand Champion. Even Duke admits it: Richard is pushing him. The gap between them is measured in tenths, and Richard is optimistic. He knows there’s more out there for him.
Autocross is where Richard looks most like himself.
His first run was clean–just a read on the surface. He’s four-tenths behind Duke.
His second run is sharper. Closing the gap.
His third run? This looks like Richard King: tidy, violent, fast. A run that gets the paddock’s attention. He’s in the hunt.
Duke is, too.
The morning autocross is done, and Richard is sitting in a strong position.
But the day has other plans.
The transmission starts acting up during the drag racing event. Third gear refuses to go in under load. He backs off and tries again. Same result.
One final pass, and he coaxes all 650 horsepower from second into third, and the Vette surges down the big end.
Then the track sprint hits, and the transmission issues follow.
On his first run, third gear balks again, and his attention is ripped to the drama under his seat. At the first kink, the rear steps out and doesn’t respond to countersteering.
Richard and the car are spinning out of control.
On his second run, he tries a work-around: Rev out first, gentle shift into second, then ease it into third.
It works.
Once.
The third run is a mess inside the Vette as Richard battles both the transmission and the course.
This is where the story shifts.
Richard isn’t fighting Duke anymore.
He’s fighting the car.
And he refuses to break it.
With help from the paddock, he adds fluid and treats the car with the kind of sympathy that comes from years of breaking things and learning the hard way.
By late afternoon, he gets third gear back. Not perfect, but alive.
Richard goes into the second autocross knowing he has the pace. And the first guy who can run into the 21s will win.
He just needs a clean run.
He doesn’t get one.
He hits the third-to-last cone on a 22.3–a time that would’ve changed the weekend.
He feels it.
But he knows something more important: The speed is there, P1 is still in his grasp.
He just has to find it again tomorrow.
By the time the sun is fading under the rim of Texas Motor Speedway, he’s exhausted–physically, mentally, emotionally. The paddock is quieter now, most teams already gone, leaving only the weary and broken behind.
I asked him, “End of the day–where are you, one to 10?”
“I feel better now. Seven or eight. The transmission thing, that was the part I wanted to push without risking breaking anything.”
He’s still in it.
He’s still swinging.
Tomorrow, he gets another shot.
Friday tried to break Richard.
Saturday was his answer.
And here’s the thing about Richard: He doesn’t fold when things get hard. He never has. That confidence didn’t come from winning–it came from his father. It came from racing dirt bikes as a kid and dumping it hard, the kind that can knock more than the wind out of you.
His dad was always there to pick him up, dust him off and put him right back on.
“You’re fine. Get on, let’s go,” he would say.
That was all he needed. It’s all any of us ever need. No drama. Just belief–belief that you can do anything if you keep getting back on and trying again.
Richard told me his dad was “the fastest race car driver that was never a race car driver,” and that moment stuck with him. Confidence wasn’t something you waited for. It was something you built by getting back up when the world knocks you off your bike.
That’s the part of him that shows up on Saturday.
And once again, the paddock community shows why Holley LS Fest feels like home. People like Tommy Brinkman, who make a parts store run for higher-temp fluid, a gear oil pump and an extra set of hands to make quick work of replacing the old transmission fluid.
Photograph by Tommy Brinkman.
It works: He gets third gear back.
Not perfect, but alive.
And so is Richard.
Autocross is first up today, and this is where Richard looks most at home. The runs aren’t desperate, they’re deliberate. Controlled. The kind of runs that come from competing in autocross at the national level. Richard’s been through this fire already, and he can walk through it–with clarity.
Drag racing gives him two clean passes before third gear rears its ugly head. This time it’s not unexpected, and Richard manages it. He’s salvaged what he can. He’s kept himself and the car in the fight.
He’s not fighting the car anymore.
He’s working with it.
Speed stop (3S) is the final challenge of the weekend: a sprint through a short technical course that ends in a hard braking box. Hit it too slow and you lose time. Hit it too hot and you slide out of the finish box and DNF.
The first run is cautious.
The second is fast, but he brakes too early.
The third run is what Richard is all about: steady, fast and too stubborn to quit.
It puts him P3 in 3S.
Not the win he wanted, but the run he needed.
Saturday wasn’t about clawing back points.
It was about finishing on his terms.
And he does.
Richard doesn’t win Grand Champion. But he doesn’t lose, either.
He finishes strong across all four events, consistently in the top three except in drag racing. This is where the unknown of a new car–and being a solo racer–had its greatest impact. His transmission struggles earn him fifth place in the drag racing and P4 overall, just one point out of P3.
Sitting on the trailer fender as evening drops, he reflects on the weekend.
“I did my best,” he says. “That’s the most important.”
He looks at the Corvette: dusty, hot, tired.
“I’ll be back,” he says.
And that’s the real story: not the results, but the effort. The work. The struggle. The people who show up because they love this stuff enough to chase it, even when it hurts.
That’s grassroots.
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