Greensburg racer makes pro debut
Just beside Vinny Luhovey’s childhood home, about four miles west of Greensburg, there’s a little dirt track making a figure eight as it winds through his side yard. These days, Luhovey can throw a baseball from one end to the other — in his words, the track is “the tiniest thing ever.”
Today, that description makes sense. On Saturday, Luhovey, 19, will be racing at High Point Raceway in Mount Morris. More importantly, it’s the site of the High Point National, Luhovey’s first pro event. Races are scheduled to begin at 10:15 a.m. with the qualifying rounds.
When Luhovey gets there, he’ll be surrounded by racers riding factory bikes from the sport’s biggest companies — Honda, Suzuki, KTM, Kawasaki. Just like them, Luhovey, a 2018 graduate of Hempfield, will be on top of a Suzuki on Saturday afternoon. That’s about where the similarities end.
Theirs are top-of-the-line factory bikes. His is publicly available, purchased from a local dealer. Theirs are purely for racing, freshly fitted for each race. His is the same one he uses to practice, with the same worn-down parts he uses at local races nearly every weekend. And the biggest difference: theirs are free, part of sponsorship deals. Luhovey’s is the product of years of savings: nearly $14,000 for two bikes, a 250F and 450F.
“Pretty much everybody struggles that doesn’t have a ride,” Luhovey said. “There’s a lot of good privateer guys that, they’re spending their own money, they’re showing up in their own stuff.”
Some of that money does come from a few minor sponsorship deals and the purses in local races Luhovey competes in. But most comes from his day job — pouring concrete for his dad, Vincent’s, company, the same company that allowed Vincent to build that dirt track with his skid steer 15 years ago.
By the time Vinny was 12, he started helping his dad at work — partly because Vincent needed the help, but partly because he wanted to showcase the alternative to racing.
“He wanted to show me how it all was and teach me and show me how hard it is,” Luhovey said. “He always would tell me, ‘This is why you need to be a pro racer.’ We’d laugh about it and I’d be like, ‘Oh, I know, trust me, it sucks.’”
Now, Luhovey works for his dad nearly full time, traveling around the area to build patios, sidewalks and driveways. But racing is still top priority, even if his bikes can’t take the wear of riding three to four times a week like sponsored racers do. Instead, he finds a way to work out daily, even if it means waking up early before a morning concrete pour or training into the night when work runs late.
“I train constantly so that’s the only thing I have for all this,” Luhovey said. “I keep up my cardio, my strength, I train all the time. That way when I’m up on the bike, OK, I know how to ride a bike. So as long as my conditioning and that’s good, I feel like I’m confident enough to go and do it.”
Even in his training, though, Luhovey is at a natural disadvantage. While his competition has access to the best gyms and trainers, he relies on an assortment of workout equipment that he and his friend Dillon have been building for the past few years in his garage — the same place Vincent first set him off on a bike at age 2½, slamming into walls at every turn, just two years before his first race at age 4.
On Saturday, Luhovey will be hoping to impress enough to attract sponsors, but that has been his goal for the past decade at the Loretta Lynn’s Amateur National — a major amateur race that many racers use as their final amateur race before going pro — where he earned his pro license racing with a broken thumb in 2017.
This time, even if the sponsors don’t come, his childhood dream — fostered back on that little dirt track 15 years ago — will.