Start your engines: It’s the Tieton Grand Prix

TIETON, Wash. – Teams of racers from as far as California and Arizona gathered Saturday in Tieton for the city’s annual Grand Prix, which saw 25 teams race handcrafted motor vehicles along main thoroughfares.

The vehicles – sometimes called cyclekarts – are miniature racecars designed to replicate classic racecars from the early 1900s, the open-wheel Grand Prix racing era. They top out on straightaways at more than 40 mph, but drivers were encouraged to keep their speeds around 25 mph during Saturday’s race.

After all, Tieton’s Grand Prix isn’t about winning.

“There’s not necessarily a winner. We don’t want them to go full out; it’s supposed to be a fun event, not crazy,” said Brandice Worley, who manages events for Mighty Tieton, the organization that’s sponsored the Grand Prix since its inception six years ago.

“It’s a true gentleman’s club. It’s not about winning; it’s about the camaraderie,” said Ronnie Hauck, a Yakima native living in Portland who participated in his third Tieton Grand Prix.

Saturday’s races were divided into seven heats, with only a handful of entries participating in each. The main event was the actual Grand Prix race, where all 25 entries raced one another. The event, which took place on the streets around Tieton City Park, was lively: Dozens of spectators lined sidewalks and cheered as racers came speeding past.

When building their cars, teams can spend a year or more on them. Entries must fit an unflinchingly rigid criteria: They must be handmade, measure about 8 feet in length, weigh 250 to 300 pounds, have a steel chassis and wood or aluminum body, use Honda GX200 engines, and draw clear design inspiration from the open wheel race cars from the early 1900s. No builder can spend more than $2,500 on a car.

“Everything is to a spec. It’s all based on a 1920s paradigm,” Hauck said.

Where builders get to be creative is in designing the car’s appearance. Most teams, Hauck said, build their cars to represent different countries. His assertion was true of Saturday’s contestants: One team built a Ferrari-style cyclekart to represent Italy, and another built a Mercedes-Benz cyclekart to pay homage to Germany. One team modeled a car after the “Bloody Mary,” a famous cyclekart built in the late 1920s partly by John Bolster, who went on to become a prominent cyclekart racer.

One driver, Helen Varey, has attended all six Tieton Grand Prixes. Varey, 21, who stared racing when she was 11, said the sport’s unorthodoxy is what inspired her to begin cyclekart racing. She also finds motivation in being one of the only women in the race each year.

“It’s something different, and I like things that are different,” she said, “And I definitely like to challenge the stereotype (of being a female driver), like when people say, ‘You drive like a girl,’ I can say, ‘yeah, and I just won.’”