16-year-old Gilroy resident well on way to reaching aspiration
of becoming a race car driver
By John Coscia
I feel the need, the need for speed.
It may have been Tom Cruise, playing the confident, ever-brash fighter pilot Pete “Maverick” Marshall in the movie “Top Gun” that coined the phrase but it’s young men like 16-year-old Gilroy resident Mike Hill that are not just talking the talk – they’re walking the walk.
Or should we say … racing the race.
On any given day you’re most likely to find Mike in his favorite place in the world – behind the wheel of a race car, usually a Go-Kart. But make no mistake about it, this isn’t your Daddy’s lawnmower motor-powered Go-Kart. These are aerodynamic machines that go as fast as 116 mph as the driver sits on a piece of fiberglass, the only separation from he and the ground, less than half an inch away.
“It’s a real rush. When I’m behind the wheel of a race car I feel so comfortable. It’s not to say that I’ve never crashed. I have,” said Mike, who is also a defensive lineman on the Valley Christian varsity football team. “It rattles your cage a bit but you just get right back in and do it again.”
To say that Mike eats, breathes and sleeps racing would be an understatement. It’s more like it flows in his veins.
Most teen-agers that have just hit their 16th birthday hardly know what college they want to attend, Mike already has his life planned out.
“Me and my Dad spend hours upon hours wrenching the cars, getting our hands dirty and only get two hours of sleep sometimes,” he admits. “I love it. I can’t think of anything else in this world that I’d rather do for a living.”
And for those of you that are thinking, “Yeah nice pipe dream for a kid but he’ll soon get a reality check.” Well, think again – because this kid is the real deal.
As a 10-year-old in the Quarter Kart Series, he won the second race he ever competed in. Since moving to the full Kart Series he has found the Winner’s Circle on many an occasion.
After spending his rookie year acclimating to the series he won the season opener this year. In fact this year he competed in 20 races in three different race series, and he has found his way to the podium (top-three finish) 50 percent of the time.
Earlier this year Mike captured the Northern California Rotax Championship which earned him an invite at the Rotax Grand Nationals this past September in South Bend, Ind., where 70 of the best drivers from across the U.S., Mexico, Costa Rica, Jamaica and Canada competed.
Despite being the youngest person in the field at 15 years old, Mike worked his way to the front of the pack and finished in fifth place.
“I was thrilled with my performance. I’d say the average driver in the race was about 25 or 26 years old. So to be able to compete and hold my own with racers of that caliber and age bracket gives me a lot of confidence,” Mike said. “My aspirations right now are definitely to be a race car driver and be able to do it for a living. I can’t tell you enough how much my parents (Cathy and Jack Yovanov) support and the support of all the guys at the shop has helped. This isn’t a sport that’s cheap and my parents have poured a lot of money, time and resources into helping me be successful. I can’t thank them enough.
“The guys at the shop are one of a kind. There’s none better,” Mike brags. “Kris (Shaw) and Gavin (Nishihira) and Adrian (Szwarcberg), he’s the owner of the Marin Karting shop, they’re all awesome. They give me everything I need in order to be successful.”
While Mike has by no means completely given up his Karting days for good, in 2006 he is graduating to the full-sized Formula Ford Series.
The decision was made easy when he was recently chosen as just one of six applicants from the 471 that applied to attend the prestigious Ron Sutton’s Winner’s Circle Driver Career Program.
“It’s like a college for race car drivers,” described Jack, Mike’s father and biggest fan. “It’s not just a school that teaches you how to drive fast. They inculcate in you some of the most basic fundamentals of the sport from how to deal with the media to the importance of your conduct on and off the track. After two or three years in this program some of the sport’s biggest names come recruiting for drivers. Being accepted there is the dream of a lifetime.”
Mike wrapped up his 2005 racing season over the Thanksgiving Weekend when he and two other teammates competed in the 4-hour Enduro race at Infineon Raceway, Calif. Mike and his teammates qualified in 22nd place, fell back to 24th at the start of the race and by the two-hour mark had worked their way to the lead.
“Once we took the lead at about two hours,” Mike said, “We never gave it up. It was pretty impressive to work through the pack like that. We went from second to last to the front in two hours and we changed drivers every 30 minutes.”
While at least right now Formula One and Indy-style racing appear to be Mike’s passion, his two favorite drivers come from the NASCAR world, namely Jeff Gordon and Tony Stewart.
“They had a similar background to me. They both started in Karts and worked their way up,” Mike explained. “And they’re both great drivers. Plus they seem like good guys off the track as well. The first Kart I ever got was the exact same paint scheme as Tony Stewart’s. It had the Home Depot logo and everything.”
Not only is Gordon someone that Mike admires, they also both started at the same home track, Baylands, Calif. and share the same mentor, Ken Rice, who got both drivers started in the Quarter Kart Series.
But it’s that Tony Stewart/Home Depot orange that most identifies this race team these days and it’s something that his father has carried as a theme for his son’s Yo Racing Team.
“Our last name, Yovanov, was too hard for a lot of people to pronounce and I had a friend whose name was also hard to pronounce that started with the same letter ‘Yo’ so we just called our racing team Yo Racing,” Jack explained. “As for the orange, we’ve put it on everything including Mike’s helmet. It’s become what we’re recognized for now.”
Ironically enough, however, when asked which race would be his ultimate dream to win, the Indianapolis 500 or the Daytona 500, Mike, without hesitation exclaimed, “The Indy 500, definitely the Indy 500.”
If his past and current success is any indication, then Mike better learn to have an acquired taste for milk (the drink that goes to every winner of the Indy 500) because he might be drinking a lot of it in the near future.
His need for speed is insatiable. Racing flows through his veins. He can show you the way to the Checkered Flag as easily as most people could recite their own name.
Mike Hill is coming to a Victory Lane near you – count on it.
