Pit Pass: Kyle Hirst — Rust Magazine

On taking a step back from driving, starting Tiner-Hirst Enterprises, and returning to Paradise.

Text + Photos Saroyan Humphrey

Spotlight | Kyle Hirst, 31, is beginning a new chapter in his life.

“I wanted to do something different,” he says. “You can race forever but with a family now, I enjoy being home. I needed to find something more prolonged.”

Hirst, the wily California sprint car racer with four NARC/King of California and three Sprint Car Challenge Tour driving titles, has been working long days with his business partner, long-time friend and fellow racer, Steven Tiner, to open Tiner-Hirst Enterprises in Chico, California. It’s a racer-focused fabrication and parts shop that has been doing business since June 2018. Tiner-Hirst is also fielding a house sprint car which Hirst drove to his third straight SCCT championship in 2019.

A third-generation sprint car driver, Hirst has been a major force on the West Coast sprint car scene driving for some of the top-tier teams in California, including Roth Motorsports and Tarlton Motorsports. Hirst won his first sprint car main event in 2005 at Santa Maria at age 17. Since then he has amassed roughly 100 main event wins, including 28 on the KWS/NARC tour, (fourth on the all-time list, behind Brent Kaeding, Tim Kaeding, and Jonathan Allard).

On his way to four titles in six years, Hirst won his first King of the West/NARC championship in 2013. Today he’s still at the top of his game, but the champion driver has reduced his race schedule by nearly 75%. Racing just 20 times this season, Hirst and Tiner have been focusing their efforts to build longevity in their business.

“I could’ve kept racing, but I couldn’t have done racing and the shop 100%,” Hirst says. “So, this year, racing the house 94, it’s a part of building our business, building our brand, getting our name out there.”

Hirst and Steven Tiner in the pits at Stockton Dirt Track, 2019.

On this day, the final night of his racing season, Hirst is at Stockton Dirt Track. Standing in the team hauler, talking about the changes in his racing life, plans for the future, and recently returning to the house that he and his family nearly lost during the devastating 2018 Camp Fire that destroyed most of the town of Paradise.

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Has it been hard for you to step back from racing as much?
I think it surprised a lot of people because we were rockin’ and rollin’ and that’s why I feel so confident about my decision. It’s been on my own terms. I ran third in Trophy Cup last month and I ran 20 races this year and usually I run 60-70. I have noticed that I’m not as sharp. I can see that when I’m out there. I’ve been in a lot better race shape. But if I crash this thing, it’s our own dollar. But I still go out there and give it my all.

What has been the inspiration to make a change?
Everything I’ve always done has been to make a living at racing. I pay my bills with it, I bought my house with it. Everything in my life, since I was a kid, racing has been my career. If I was a UPS man, or whatever, I would be going to the next step by now and therefore this is my next step.

Tell me how Tiner-Hirst got started.
Starting the business was something I’ve wanted to do for a long time. Steve and I have talked about doing this for a long time. We finally pulled the trigger and got a shop in Chico. If I was still racing for Roth (Motorsports) and doing the business too, it wouldn’t have been fair to starting this up.

What kind of work do you guys do?
We’re a speed shop. We fabricate, we sell new and used parts. We do everything. We want to be a one stop shop. We want to keep growing. I weld, fabrication, all of it—a secretary, bookkeeper. Between the two of us, we just took it on.

When I started racing, if I wanted to race, I had to know how to do it all. We had to build ‘em and fix ‘em. I learned a lot working at ART (Speed Equipment) for a few years. In Australia, I crashed a car and I had to fix it in a parking lot. I know how to weld.

How many people work at the shop?
It's just Steven and I. Sometimes my dad, he’s retired, will come by, hang out, build wings and go to lunch. We’re just a big family and it’s great.

Are you building race cars from the ground up?
We’re not building chassis. Drag links, tie rods, parts, wings, all that stuff; pretty much everything besides building our own chassis. I don’t know if we’ll ever get to that point; that does take a lot of effort. It’s a big effort to build a frame.

We want to sell parts. Places like Maxim (Chassis Co.) definitely just pound out chassis after chassis. We’re going to be a Slade (shocks) dealer next year. And I want to grow within our means so we don’t fall on our faces. But we’re doing great, enjoying it. Every day feels like it’s five minutes long. The first year and a half has literally just flown by.

We also have a developmental/rental deal. We’re right in the heart of (outlaw) karts with Cycleland and Red Bluff and that gives somebody a chance to try a sprint car and go racing with us for a couple of thousand and not $80,000. And that’s something unique we can offer.

How did the partnership with Steven get started?
We’ve been family friends forever. My dad (Rick) and his dad (Rich) raced together. We’ve always been friends. His sprint car was the first sprint car I ever got in at Hanford. I was 14 and I mud packed with his car. We’ve always clicked. There are probably very few people that I could do a business with; we trust each other and we haven’t fought. We have the same drive and it makes it work very well.

Growing up, was racing always the thing you wanted to do?
I never really knew anything else. It’s all I ever did. I’ve always been a driven person. The only other thing that I’ve ever done, besides racing, is I laid tile with my dad. Other than that, I’ve raced and I’ve worked on ‘em.

“I’m enjoying the next chapter and running a successful business.”

Hirst wheels the Roth Motorsports 410 machine during time trials at Tulare, CA, 2017.

Your dad was a bad ass driver. He must’ve been a big influence.
Yeah. (laughs) But he’s always just been my dad. He won a lot of races. Brent (Kaeding) was one of the best on the West Coast forever and my dad was always right there with him. He ran second to him in (NARC) points for four years and then finally won one (1986). He was great and he was humble about it. And he’s passed his humbleness on to me and that’s something that I’m proud of. I like that and I try to be that as much as I can.

He was a big influence in the work ethic too. He passed it onto me and our whole family. My whole family put up with a lot for me to go racing. My dad worked side job after side job because his 8-5 job, tiling, was for the house and to pay bills. Every side job was to go racing. Me and my brother, we know how to put in some tile. We grouted, we carried buckets of mud.

You were one of the first generations of young drivers to move up through the karts and move into sprint cars at a young age.
We actually started in quarter midgets and it was boring. You couldn’t pass on the top. It was one groove. Rodney (Tiner) had tried the outlaw karts and my dad hadn’t heard about ‘em, so, that’s where we went. I ran go karts until I was 16 and then started sprint cars … and off we went.

You won your first championship in 2013. Did you feel like things were just coming together for you?
It was a long road. I went from driving for Gary Perkins for many years and I felt like I was on top of the world. I lived at the shop, worked on em, got paid. But I was young and dumb and I learned from my mistakes.

Hirst collects his thoughts after a hard fought victory at Hanford, CA, 2015.

These days I talk to Gary all the time and ask life advice. We’re best friends. He was a big mentor for me. When we came to an end in 2011, my seat looked like swiss cheese. Then I got a call, “hey, you might drive the Roth car.” And that was a great relationship for six or seven years and what we were able to do was so cool. I never thought I was the best. I just thought I’m going to go out every night and do everything I can to win, keep making them happy, keep my ride and so that’s what I kept trying to do.

My first night out was at Antioch, we broke the track record and won and we just continued on.

But now I’m enjoying the next chapter and running a successful business.

You have plenty to keep you busy.
Yeah, I thought I was busy when I was 21, and now I have a business, two kids, a great wife. If I get six hours of sleep, I’m happy. It’s whole different realm.

But you know, I’ve done it all on my own terms and I’m happy with that. If I didn’t run at all next year, or just ran Chico, five minutes away from my house, I’d be happy with that. It’s hard to be away from my kids. I enjoy my kids. I love being a great dad and a great husband. So, I have to balance all that. If I miss a win somewhere, it doesn’t bother me anymore.

I have to ask, how’s your recovery going from the Camp Fire last year? You were right in the middle of it.
It’s probably been one of the toughest deals. The house made it, but my shop burned down. Our house was one of three houses on our street that made it. People are starting to rebuild. We’ve been home for about three months now but we’re still going through it. We don’t have one curtain, or one picture hung up. We had to re-move into our house with two kids, a business, and she works. There’s no time.

I’m just glad we got out safe and I’m glad to be home. We have road workers doing all sorts of construction work on our street right now. It’s been about a year since it happened. It’s still a lot, it hasn’t gone away. That movie (Fire in Paradise) came out on Netflix about it. My mom watched it and said it was hard for her.

And, I started the business about five months before all of this happened in June of last year. It was like, ‘boom,’ pick everything up, live in a trailer, move into a rental, in February we had a baby (Klayton). I told my wife, if we make it through this, we’re gonna live the rest of our lives together. It was tough but we’ve made it.

“It was awesome!”

Hometown hero: Celebrating a World of Outlaws victory at Chico, CA, September 8, 2017.

Have the most recent wildfires in Sonoma County triggered any PTSD for you guys?
You know, you hear they’re happening but you’re living your everyday life and so you don’t think about it. But you look at the world, or the States and there are natural disasters every freakin’ week it seems like. There’s flooding here, or a tropical storm. It’s unreal but you’re in your life and you don’t think about it.

It sucks and you hate to see it but why are these fires happening? We’ve had windy days, so, why all of a sudden is it a problem? So, moving back up there, you say it’s never going to happen again, and hope it never happens again.

It must be hard to think about but what did you lose in your shop fire?
It was my man cave and the reason we bought the house. I wanted to have a shop; I’d never had one. We’d been living in Chico and we moved up there because the property in Paradise had a shop. It was an oversized garage but the house also had a garage so, it was my shop. It was 24x34. It was small, it was perfect. I had all my trophies, everything since I was four years old from racing. There were papers, articles. Janet Larson used to print out every article from Cycleland and I could flip through and find, ‘hey, a box stock win ….’

It’s pretty much like I took everything from my racing, besides the four trophies I had in the house, and threw it in a dumpster. It’s my memories. I had West Capital trophies from my dad. I had his old helmets, everything. It was tough to lose. I had to shovel it all into a trash can and throw it away. It was tough. But we still have all of her and the kid’s stuff and I’m glad all of that didn’t go.

It was a full chapter swing; here you go, start another one.

“I had to fight off Shane Stewart!”

Battling with Shane Stewart for the lead at Chico, CA.

One of my best memories of you winning was the Outlaws race at Chico during Gold Cup in 2017.
Yeah, that was probably one of the best wins. All my family was there. It was cool. I’d been going to Gold Cup since I was four years old. It was awesome! I finally got one (Outlaws victory), I can write that off the list. You know, I won the Grand Annual Classic in Australia and that was $30,000 to win and that was awesome but that win at Chico was still cooler because it was the Outlaws. I had to fight off Shane Stewart! It was cool, one of the best ones.

What are some others that stand out in your memory?
The (Dave) Bradway (Memorial) was one I’ve always wanted. I watch that one sometimes when I’m laying in bed and I get bored. I’ll look up a race and I’ll find the Bradway. I was driving the Tarlton car. (See video below)

I’ve won the (Peter) Murphy (Classic at Tulare). There’s just a ton of em.

But I want a Trophy Cup. That’s gotta happen one of these years. I’ve been close. It’s one of those races you’ve just got to have everything going right on your side to make it happen.

What are the future plans for the business?
We’re moving shop, just next door, this winter. It’s double the square footage. We’re going to be Slade shock dealer. It’s what we run. They’re from Ohio. So, we’re going to dyno and fix them.

We’ve had phenomenal support from all the racing people. I don’t want to do this for five years and wizzle out. We’re here for the next 30. I want to see people have TH on their cars. You know, we help racers go racing.

Racing’s not just about the guys with the big truck and Featherlite trailers, it’s every guy and I love talking to every one of ‘em, hearing their story and helping ‘em out.

Well, it seems like everybody likes Kyle.
(laughs) I’m sure there are a couple of people that I’ve pissed off along the way. I treat people like I like to be treated and I like smiling and having a good time. I like racing hard against people and getting out and giving ‘em a high five. I’ve yelled at officials and thrown my helmet but that’s because I’m a passionate guy and it’s a part of it.

Keep up with Hirst:

i: @k_hirst1
t: @kylehirstracing