Love of racing helps teen overcome challenges
Austin Riley loves cars.
I mean, he really loves cars. He loved cars before he could walk and when he started walking would carry small toy cars with him everywhere he went. On his first day of kindergarten, Riley had his lunch and about 200 little Matchbox cars in his knapsack.
“We always knew he had a passion for cars,” Austin’s father, Jason, said. “He loved loud cars, he loved exotic cars, he loved looking at race cars.”
The only thing Austin ever wanted to talk about was cars and other kids at school thought he was weird.
At age 7, Austin’s parents learned he had Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, along with finemotor-skills issues and high anxiety. When he wasn’t playing with cars or talking about them, Austin would drive a small, battery-operated Jeep up and down the street outside the family home until the battery was exhausted. His father learned to always make sure there were two or three extra charged batteries in the house because if one ran out on the Jeep it was like the end of the world for Austin.
Doctors suggested to Austin’s parents that they should enrol him in sports to help with his co-ordination and fine motor skills. They signed him up for soccer and Austin “failed miserably” in his father’s words. Skating didn’t go any better.
Then a pamphlet for a go-karting track arrived in the mail at their home in Aurora, Ont., and Jason thought it might be a good sport for his son. For weeks, he tried every day to convince Austin to give go-karting a shot, but had no luck.
“I suck at everything,” Austin told his father. “If I go, people will just make fun of me like everywhere else. I’ll get upset and then we’ll come home. So why don’t we just skip the whole thing?”
His father wouldn’t give up. Finally, about a month after his first attempt and two weeks before Austin’s eighth birthday, Jason walked into his son’s bedroom and before he could say a word the boy responded: “OK, I’ll go one time just to make you happy. I’m doing one lap and then going home and never coming back.”
His father said a little prayer, hoping it would work.
Austin went to the track and put the pedal to the metal in the go-kart — going full speed around the track and spinning out in the corners. But he kept going. In fact, he wouldn’t get off the track after his allotted time had passed. There were about 50 other parents watching and Jason could hear them saying: “What’s wrong with that kid? Why doesn’t he listen? Where’s his mom and dad?” Jason put his head down and walked angrily on to the track to stop his son — upset at the other parents and at his boy, feeling frustrated, embarrassed and at the end of his rope.
“That walk is etched in my mind,” the father said.
Austin stopped the go-kart about five feet in front of his father and Jason noticed something very special: the biggest smile he had ever seen on his son’s face.
The father started to cry. “That was the magic moment where our lives changed for the better because we found something that was going to change my son’s life,” Jason said. “We didn’t know it was going to change our lives as well. That’s kind of where it all started.”
Austin kept go-karting and at age 12, after the family had moved to Uxbridge, Ont., was diagnosed on the high-functioning end of the autism spectrum. That didn’t stop him from eventually winning three karting championships and in 2015, he graduated from the Skip Barber Formula Racing School in Laguna Seca, Calif. Last year, Austin finished second overall at the Ron Fellows Karting Championship and this year made the jump into real cars, joining the Nissan Micra Cup series.
Austin is a huge Formula One fan and Infiniti hosted the 18-year-old and his parents at the Canadian Grand Prix, giving them a chance to sit in the Renault paddock at Circuit Gilles Villeneuve on Friday and tour the team garage.
When asked Friday what he likes most about driving a race car, Austin said: “I’m going as fast as my brain is.”
He added: “The seatbelt is really tight, which makes me feel calm.”
Austin’s story will no doubt inspire other children and parents dealing with autism and his father started a Racing With Autism website as a platform to raise awareness. Austin’s favourite saying is: “Just because you have autism, it doesn’t mean you can’t do great things.”
Said Austin’s father: “I didn’t know if he was going to have the talent as a driver. I didn’t care if he was going to win trophies or championships … that was the furthest thing from my mind. All I wanted was to give my son joy in his life and find him something that he hadn’t had to that point in his life, and that was acceptance.”