J.C. ’08 and Kristy ’10 Kester of Kester Racing boast a team that is half made up of Aggies, including current students and a professor. The Kesters are competing in this year’s Star Mazda Championship Series.
Photo Courtesy of Kester Racing
By Krista Smith ’09
It’s another sticky Texas summer, and the sun is particularly relentless today. It beats down onto the Texas World Speedway, leaving the track piping hot.
J.C. ’08 and Kristy ’10 Kester and the rest of their team are finishing up a quick lunch break, trying to escape the heat in an air-conditioned trailer. The pair’s racecars, No. 24 and No. 48, respectively, are parked under a covered area, waiting patiently for their drivers to return. The Kester Racing team has been at it for hours, day after day, as they time, tune and tweak the new setups on their Formula E racecars. The bulk of the races in the Star Mazda Championship Series is approaching fast and furious; Kester Racing has to be ready.
The racing suits are zipped back up, the helmets come on and the Kesters are strapped back into their cars, eventually pulling the vehicles back out onto the speedway, revving up for another long afternoon.
It’s just another summer day for the Kesters—one of the few brother and sister racing teams in professional motorsports.
Kester Racing started in Royalty, a tiny town in West Texas, when Jeff Kester, the pair’s father, began taking J.C. to watch kart races in nearby Odessa on the weekends. It wasn’t too long until J.C. was racing a kart of his own. Little sister Kristy begged to be taken to the tracks to watch her brother race and ended up in a kart of her own before the day was over.
From that moment, the Kesters dominated the kart racing scene. Among his other top-place finishes, J.C. is a two-time regional and two-time national champion in the IKF Road Race Grand Nationals; Kristy has multiple first-, second- and third-place finishes, including placing second in the 2005 IKF Road Race Grand Nationals.
The wins were good, the driving was fun, but then came the one Saturday race when the Kesters realized their karting was more than a passing hobby.
“Two years ago, we were kart racing, and someone brought a Formula One car out,” Kristy said. “We sat in it and raced in it. It was like it was the next natural step.”
The Kesters traded in their karts for Formula E racecars, entering into the Mazdaspeed Motorsports Development Ladder which promotes Mazda series champions into the next levels of their career. The Kesters are racing along with 30 other drivers in the Star Mazda series.
Racing is full of danger, especially since the cars the Kesters drive easily top 155 miles per hour. The perils of the sport are never far from the pair’s minds, especially since Kristy had a close call of her own while still karting.
“I flipped my kart during a race,” Kristy said, pointing at scars on her arms. “I was going over 100 miles per hour. It was scary, but it was a good experience to have, to see that’s what could happen.”
Kristy suffered only minor injuries, but the damage had been done to her kart. The team stayed up all night to build her another car, and on Sunday, Kristy finished the race in first place.
Racing has taken the Kesters across the country, through Oregon, Georgia, Florida, New York and even Canada, and the duo has garnered plenty of attention, but not just for their wins. Kristy is one of few female racers in a male-dominated sport. And making her situation unique: she’s competing against her brother.
“I disagree with the other women drivers who say they have to work harder in the sport,” she said. “I’ve never had any kind of problem with a guy racer like that. It’s just all about your driving in the end.”
Racing against a sibling does have its advantages. The Kesters look out for one another on the track, driving smart to avoid wrecks and other track threats. But the sibling rivalry does tend to kick in during the final laps.
“If we’ve run a clean race, and we’re both still in it, it’s anybody’s race,” J.C. said, laughing. “We’re both extremely competitive.”
It was the appeal of the Texas World Speedway that lured J.C. to College Station in 2004 to attend Texas A&M. Kristy followed her big brother in 2006, but had made the decision to become an Aggie long before racing had come into the picture. Bill Mather, owner of the racetrack, has been the biggest help to the Kesters’ advancing careers since he signed on to sponsor Kester Racing, allowing the team use of the facility.
Balancing college and racing hasn’t been easy. J.C., a 22-year-old manufacturing and mechanical engineering major, and Kristy, a 20-year-old biomedical sciences major, don’t exactly have the easiest of classes. The workload will get even harder next semester, as Kristy begins preparing to take the MCAT.
“Racing is a fulltime job,” J.C. said. “Most of the kids take a year or two off (of school) because it’s so much. You’re either testing the cars or at the gym or doing other preparation, and on top of that, you’ve got tests and stuff at school.”
The pair is also involved in the Society of Automotive Engineers Club (J.C. has served as president for the past two years) and Texas A&M Sports Car Club. In fact, it was through these two organizations that the Kesters met more than half of their racing team. Kester Racing includes several current mechanical engineering students in its ranks, and even a professor, Dr. Make McDermott, an associate professor of mechanical engineering who, along with his students, recently set a world land speed record in 2007.
The heaps of stress that pile up on their shoulders are bearable because of the racing, Kristy said.
“It gets me through school,” she said. “It’s a high-stress sport, but I love doing it. It’s just relaxing, calming, exciting and just this adrenaline rush.”
Being surrounded by Aggie engineers and having access to a world-class racetrack has helped the Kesters cultivate their passion for driving.
“Being here, doing this,” J.C. said, “it’s a dream come true.”
To read more about Kester Racing, visit the team’s website at http://www.kesterracing.com.
To follow the Kesters and other racers through this season’s Star Mazda Championship Series, visit http://www.starmazda.com.
Krista Smith ’09 is a student communications assistant at The Association of Former Students. To contact her, e-mail at KSmith09@AggieNetwork.com.