Race To The Clouds
Interviews and Photos: Daniel H. Lackey
With Joey Seely, Rhys Millen, Jonny Lieberman
RISK… IT’S AN INESCAPABLE part of life. Each morning, and afternoon, I willingly join droves of commuters in a high speed choreography on Interstate 405. We’ve all heard the statistics, yet the mundanity of the daily commute has rendered the perceived risks to be… well… mundane.
Some choose to live more dangerously, taking greater risks for greater potential reward. And it’s the reward, or rather, the pursuit of the reward, that comes to define us, not the risks we take to achieve them. The reward might be financial, be it through a return on investment or the rolling of dice at a Las Vegas craps table.
JOEY SEELY, “I stayed up all night sometimes. I’d stay for two or three hours after everyone else had left and I’d come in on weekends just to stare at the car… plan, and plan, and plan. We worked on it slowly, one step at a time, always with the big picture in mind.“
JONNY LIEBERMAN, “Pikes is just a fascinating race, I don’t know, there’s something very, very addictive and captivating about it. The prep is nuts, it’s a real discipline, I think with a lot of other races you show up and go but Pikes, the amount of time you spend getting up early every morning and doing all that is crazy, and you don’t get a lot of practice either. That week leading up to it, if you only did that you might only get three or four runs on each section, it would be like three or four incomplete laps before you go out and race.
