What you can't drive away from
Blaise Daugherty
I was born to race. The love of racing courses through my veins, and it is in my dreams when I fall asleep. My dad raced for years before me, and his father before him. I fell in love with racing the first time I watched my dad race. The loud engines, the fast trucks, and the awesome atmosphere drew me in and kept me interested. Ever since my first race experience, I had a passion for offroad racing. Once I started racing, I thought nothing could get me to stop. Or so I thought.
My Family
My dad (#23) is Jerry Daugherty, the founder of Live Fast Play Dirty Motorsports. My brother (#24) is Aaron Daugherty, who raced under our family's race team. My dad raced for over 30 years of his life, he raced in desert races, to stock car races, and short course off-road. He has won many races and placed 3rd in the Baja 1000. My brother was a top contender in the Pro-4 Pro-Lite class of the Lucas Oil Off-Road Racing Series. I had some big shoes to fill when I started racing, I wanted to push myself to be just as good as my family. My goals were to drive the same trucks as my brother and dad, and make my own racing legacy.
The Start of my Legacy
I started racing when I was 8 years old. My parents gifted me a trophy kart to start practicing in. I drove it around my culdesac, in the desert, and on trails in the mountains. My first race was at Miller Motorsports Park, I was racing a Jr 2 kart. There were 4 racers in my class, all of which were my friends from previous races. I had placed 2nd out of the four that had entered. This was a huge success for me. I felt like I was on top of the world. This carried over to my next races in this class. I raced in the Jr 2 class for 2 years. I placed 1st in six of my races, and 2nd in the other twelve. This motivated me to push harder and harder. After my Jr 2 career was over, I moved into the Mini Stock class.
Mini Stocks
The Mini Stock Class consists of small bodied trucks with no modifications other than roll cage installments, fuel cells, shocks, and bumpers. Transitioning from Jr 2 to my Mini Stock was a very exciting and challenging change. The Mini Stock is three times as big as the Jr 2, twice as fast, and the mini stock has a manual transmission! As a 10 year old, I had never even seen a manual truck before in person. I was taught to drive "stick" by my dads crew chief Todd. He became my mentor and great friend at the races. Once I learned the adjustments to the new truck, I began racing again. In my class this time was seven race trucks. The most competition I had ever seen in racing. My first race was very exciting, I flew farther and drove faster than ever before. I spun out a few times, and ended last place. This race crushed me, I felt very frustrated and naive. This caused me to practice hard. I took any opportunity I could to go out to the race track, went out to the desert to practice, and even raced in simulators to test my skills. After my rough start, I climbed up the ladder, and got up to 2nd place almost every race. My racing career lasted until I was 15 years old, when it abruptly ended.
The Finish Line
When I was 15 years old I was admitted into the hospital after being sick for over a week. I had maintained a fever of over 103 for a week. Once taken to the hospital I was immediately transported to Primary Children's Hospital in Salt Lake City. I had no idea what was going on, me and my mom were left in the dark until we were seen by a doctor at the new hospital. Once there I was put into a room in the cancer ward and told to wait for the doctor. After a full week of thinking the worst, and test after test after test, I was finally diagnosed. Behcet's disease, an autoimmune disorder that has little research behind it. This diagnosis meant the end of my racing career. Doctors told me crashing in a race could lead to my death. This lead to the end of our family legacy, my father and brother stopped racing shortly after, and we again became mere fans of the sport.