I have been racing off and on for about 12 years. In 2010 our family started going to Spud Speedway. The track had a new owner who decided to raffle off a racecar to help promote the track. The car was a 2000 Chevrolet Cavalier that was built for a beginners class called The Northern Lights. My girlfriend, Alanna, purchased a ticket a couple of weeks before the drawing. On the night of the drawin
g, June 19, 2010, Alanna's parents (Ronald & Sharon Miller) gave me $10 to purchase a ticket. Sharon said that she might as well buy a ticket because she already had a driver, me. Sharon's friends, Richard & Iris Theriault, decided that they would also give me $10 to buy a ticket since they already had a driver too, me. So, I took the $20 from Sharon and Iris and purchased 2 tickets to try to win the racecar. Later that night they announced the name of the winner as Donald Rideout! After winning the car we started to try and think of a name for our race team. We wanted something that would be easy to remember. We decided to use the first letter from each of our last names (R-Rideout, T-Theriault, M-Miller) to spell RTM. It sounded like RPM and we all know that RPMs are associated with cars. Therefore we thought it would be a perfect name for a race team. And so, RTM Racing was born. We even got a nickname for a short time. We were called the Cub Cadet Crew, like the lawnmower, because the announcer thought I would be in the grass more than I would be on the track. Our track announcer can be a real comedian sometimes. Later we became known as The Bumblebee Crew because of our yellow and black team shirts. This name stuck and that is what we are known as now. It took me a little time to get the car set up the way I liked but once I did we were able to get our first trophy, a 2nd place finish. Click Here to see the video. Our first season at Spud Speedway was pretty good. In 2011 we decided to build a new car. We found a 1997 Chevrolet Cavalier that was in great shape. I took the engine and transmission from the old car and put it in the new car. Our original car was black but I wanted to have a car that was the same color as our team shirts and went well with our Bumblebee logo so the new car was yellow and black. The new car was awesome! We even won Best Looking Car in our class at the 2011 Motorsports Show. Since the new car and the old car were both Chevrolet Cavaliers, I was able to use my knowledge from the old car when building and setting up the new car. This worked out very well and we were able to get seven top three finishes and a 2nd place Championship in our class. Overall, we got nine trophies for the 2011 race season. For 2012 we built a new car. An Acura Integra GS-R. This was also our first year of getting sponsors. We were able to get about 15 sponsors. Not bad. The car had its problems and we missed the first couple races of the year. We finished 6th in points for the year. In 2013 we were ready. We started out great, winning every race we were in. This is not always a good thing. We were told we had to move up a class to a faster division of 4 cylinder cars called the Fast Fours. At the end of the 2012 season I had to have surgery on my wrist. The new division proved to be more than my wrist could handle and I decided it was time to stop racing. It was one of the hardest decisions I've ever made. We sold the best car we ever had and decided to try something else. We purchased a Jr. Champ Kart and sponsored a local kid to drive it. He won the championship in 2013. This is now the main goal of our team, to help support others who want to race. That is where we are today, doing whatever we can to support others as well as our local track.
