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What
began as an innocent little adventure has
turned into a long time hobby for North
Carolina's Robert Mullis. Nearly a
decade ago, he attended a few races with a
friend whose dad happened to drive. During
an open house at East Lincoln, his friends
dad offered to let him take a few laps in
his late model. Robert did, and as they say,
that was the end of that. He found his new
love. Grabbing his old baseball number, 15,
he went racing.
Robert began
driving at East Lincoln, paying his dues and
studying his competition. Those first few
years, he learned as much as he could, tried
to stay out of the way. and get all the seat
time he could. But gradually each week he
was getting faster. Each week he was
getting more confident. In fact after a few
seasons, Robert had picked up a handful of
wins, and was even in contention for a
track championship.
But
unfortunately it was not to be. Leading the
points going into the final few races,
Robert pretty much had the title in hand,
but Robert had made himself a budget at the
beginning of the year, and was going to stay
with it. The racing had actually cost him
more than he planned, so he had a decision
to make, should he pump more money into the
team to keep racing, or should he stay true
to his original plans. Robert opted to stay
home. As a result, he lost the championship
by a few points, but he says he doesn't
regret the choice.
Around the same
time, Robert began racing some at other
tracks in the area, and he kept hearing of
Lancaster. A bit intimidated because of the
stories he had heard of how fast the track
was and how rough the competition sometimes
got he stayed away. But a chance meeting
with Timbo Mangum and some of his crew
members convinced him to give it a try
anyway.
Once on the high
banks at Lancaster, Robert put his hard work
ethic back to task. He took the first year
to study the drivers, their styles and to
see what each did to be successful. Once he
felt that he had learned the ropes, and
gained all the knowledge he could, he would
be ready to become a contender.
By 2006, he was
beginning to get a feel for what the car
needed, and what he had to do. Gone were the
days of moving over and getting out of the
way of the faster cars, he was now running
with them. He had taken that next step, now
he was ready to start winning.
That happened in
2007. It was a banner year for Robert,
kicking off the season by winning the car
show, with his newly derived persona,
"Spiderman". and capping it off with the
2007 Lancaster Speedway Track Championship
in the Super Stock class. Event after event
that year, he rolled off wins, nearly
picking up 2/3 of the trophies for the
season in a dominating fashion.
Robert would
like to thank his family, sponsors, and most
of, the fans. "It really is nice getting
outta that car and hearing those people
yelling for you. Makes it all the better."
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