Lockport, NY's Team Oakes Racing is preparing for the upcoming 2008 Go Kart racing season. Along with the help of my two drivers Haley Oakes, age 12, and Austin Oakes, age 10, we have started to overhaul the karts and are preparing our racing schedule. This year we are looking to do more traveling across New York, Pennsylvania and some national races in West Virginia plus a WKA (World Karting Association) divisional series.
 

The team had an outstanding year in 2007. Registering 14 wins and 36 top 5 finishes out of 54 races, Austin #25 was in the hunt for the points championship at Ransomville Speedway in the Junior 1 class all year, but he had to settle for third in points. Austin had 9 wins on the year and 21 top five finishes. Haley #Crazy 8 moved up a division to Junior II in '07 and struggled early on, but she finished very strong with 12 top five finishes out of her last 18 races with 5 of them being wins.

Team Oakes is happy to say they have all our sponsors staying on for another year of racing. Original Pizza Logs has been with Team Oakes Racing for four years now; they have been one of our major sponsors over the years and I want to thank Bob Cordova, the owner, for all his help and being a such a great role model for the kids. We are also pleased to have Mac Limo Company on for a third year as owner Mike Collette is a huge fan of Haley and Austin and a great supporter. JEGS High Performance was brought on last year and has agreed to another year of exciting racing with Team Oakes. Having JEGS with us has been outstanding for our race team. They are known for their winning history in drag racing and also sponsor NASCAR driver Kenny Wallace. We are proud to be associated with a sponsor like JEGS. We are pleased to say Bob Mason's Service Center will also be part of the 2008 Racing season along with Scapelliti Super Store and Herman's Auto.

I want to thank all our sponsors and all who had a hand in our success in 2007 like Jim & Erick Rudolph from Rudolph's Race Engines, Holmes Family Racing and Performance Manufacturing. Without their help, I don't think we would have had the year we had in 2007. Please go to Team Oakes Racing throughout the weeks ahead for more updates including the schedule, pictures and links to our sponsors in addition to sponsorship opportunities.

2008 completed events:
We raced Friday, March 21 at Selinsgrove Speedway in Pennsylvania, and both Austin and Haley had to run the same class with twelve other karts in it. They started off a little slow, but the finishes were a respectable 5th for Haley and 6th for Austin on that night. I feel it was a very good outing for the kids as it was our first race of the year, and the kids had never raced at that track before.
We then traveled another hour and a half to Shippensburg Speedway also in Pennsylvania, but the event was snowed out on Saturday, March 22.

Source: Sam Oakes/Team Oakes Racing PR