Out with the old and in with the new

People get very excited when making a new purchase or getting a new appliance gadget. You will see them jumping for joy, having tears running down their cheeks, or just outright screaming with excitement. Well, that is precisely the feeling we have here at DDR Motorsports with the completion of a new 750 sq ft shop.

For those who have known me for some time, you have seen us begin in the storage shed under the house. A little ten by ten area barely 6 ft tall where we worked on the quarter midgets and micro sprint to the portable garage/shelter dubbed the “taj ma tent,” which we worked out of for nearly ten years. Don’t get me wrong, the shelter served its purpose, and we won one and almost a second Pro4 championship out of it, but having a more extensive permanent structure was always the goal.

This project has been a long time coming, and to say I am only a little bit excited would be an understatement. When we first bought this house in 2003, the plan was to put up a garage and have a place to build cars and work on projects. But just as anyone with a family can tell you, life gets in the way. As the kids grew, priorities changed, we had an illness in the family, and the college years came. All of which forced us to constantly re-evaluate the next steps. In the past year, things settled down, my career has stabilized, and the kids are grown. All of this allowed me to get down to building a garage finally.

But of course, not all feel-good stories go along easily, and this one is no different. As I started the investigation, I learned about zoning laws, the need for a land survey, and having to deal will a builder. I won’t bore anyone with the details, but in the end, after a year of work, the garage got built, and we have moved in.

There is still plenty of work to do to finish the building. To begin with, we have moved both cars in, the tools are slowly making their way from storage, and interior work is planned for across the summer. For now, we are happy to step out into a larger, better-lit, more comfortable space to work.

In closing, will the garage make us faster? We hope so, not solely because we have a permanent structure but because we can work smarter, have a single space for everything, and just plain outwork everyone else.

Thanks to everyone who has supported DDR Motorsports and driver Derek Robbie all these years. We feel we are now poised to step up our game and show the world what we have as a team.

See ya at the track

Doug Robbie
Owner, #27 Tour Type Modified