Love Of Sport Helps Racer Overcome
Nate Redlinger sits in his car ready for another night's racing at the Southern Iowa Speedway
Oskaloosa, Iowa – Nate Redlinger is like every other driver at the Southern Iowa Speedway. He learned his love of racing by watching his Uncle’s race Hobby Stock and Stock Cars. By the time Redlinger was a sophomore in high school, he knew that he wanted to get into racing.
They initially bought a stock car that one of his uncles drove that for a few years until, in 2008, they bought the modified he currently has, with it sitting until the current season. He ran a hobby stock a few times earlier in the year, but settled on his modified “trying to figure things out”. “I always wanted to get out and try it, the families been doing it forever,” Redlinger said of his desire to race.
Redlinger does drive with some non-standard parts in his car, because when he was two years old he was injured in a car accident. Redlinger was paralyzed from the waist down in the accident. “Kind of a freak deal really, sitting in the back seat and someone was driving on the wrong side of the road and they hit head on.”
He now accelerates and brakes with his hand throttle that much resembles what is used on a motorcycle. You twist the throttle to accelerate, and to brake you just push down on it. “We’re working on idea’s to get both hands on the wheel and make things easier,” Redlinger says with a chuckle. Redlinger says this is how he drives his truck. “It’s a pretty basic setup really,” speaking about the device that helps him.
He’s working on getting faster in the sport, “but it’s gonna take awhile to get where I need to be to get to full speeds. The object is just to finish right now and get as many laps as I can and just feel it, get use to it,” he went on to say with that optimism that has carried him so far. “Maybe one day we’ll be pretty competitive out there, it’s just gonna take a little time,” Redlinger said.
Catch Nate in his 48R car out at the Southern Iowa Speedway on their regular racing nights.
