No tickets for this speeding

Sitting behind the wheel of a stock car at Stateline Speedway, Bill Welch couldn’t control the giddy grin across his face.

“To me, this is like getting the chance to fly an F-4,” the 61-year-old Moses Lake man said.

The 350-horsepower Chevrolet engine of blue No. 2 rumbled to life, and there was only one thing that could make the mechanic’s Father’s Day more perfect.

“Seeing my son in the rearview mirror,” Welch said.

Welch’s son Todd, 35, wasn’t about to give in to his “old man’s” taunts.

“Chicken! Chicken!” the younger Welch shouted from inside another modified Monte Carlo parked at the starting line on the Post Falls racetrack.

With a wave of the green flag, the cars were off, speeding around the quarter-mile track during a special Father’s Day event sponsored by the Competitive Edge Racing School.

For $100, participants could take 10 laps around the track in a late-model stock car.

It wasn’t NASCAR, but for the Welches and about 66 other fathers whose families bought them the opportunity, it might be as close as they will ever get to the real thing.

“It’s a learning experience for them,” said Dustin Bedwell, a member of the pit crew for Competitive Edge.

The racing school offers lessons throughout the summer, starting at $300 for more instruction and one 35-lap session, but on Father’s Day offers a cheaper deal.

The fathers, and a few women, came to the track in groups all day for the chance to climb in through the window of the NASCAR-style cars, don the helmet, the fire-retardant suit and put the pedal to the metal.

After a few minutes of instruction, the drivers took to the track in pairs as families looked on, snapping pictures.

“It was their day. We told them they could do what they wanted,” said Hannah, Todd Welch’s wife. Their three children, Sam, 11, Emma, 7, and Owen, 4, clung to the fence as their grandfather and father sped around. Each lap lasted about 15 to 20 seconds.

“We just hoped it would be fast enough for them,” Hannah Welch said.

The track is small compared to, say, the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, which is 2 1/2 miles around. Indy cars race at more than 200 mph.

On the quarter-mile track in Post Falls, stock cars probably top out at 90 mph on the straightway, officials with the racing school said. But on Sunday drivers were going about 60 mph, even though they could have legally gone 70 mph on Interstate 90.

Sunday’s drivers also weren’t allowed to pass. They were told to keep a safe distance or risk being “black-flagged,” or told to get off the track.

Todd Welch pushed that rule a few times, revving the engine as he sped up behind his father, getting a black flag at least twice.

His mother stood with video camera in hand, recording the behavior so that the taunting could continue later.

“He asked me if I wanted to ride with him in the car,” Janet Welch said of her husband, Bill. “I said no way. I know how he drives already.”