Fifty-year motorsports veteran remembers racing's early days

Ormond Beach Observer
Neighbors

Seventy-two-year-old Ernie Saxton is retiring from the racing industry — but he’ll keep writing his columns.

BY LORI HOEKSTRA | CONTRIBUTING WRITER

Ernie Saxton, 72 and with more than 50 years of experience in the motorsports industry, has retired. Well, semi-retirement, he calls it.

A former marketing director, Saxton used to split his time, working days in corporate offices and nights announcing motocross races. His career started back in 1955, on a local short track at the Volusia Speedway, on Route 40. He remembers it as a time when suites weren't available, nor were restaurants built on the straightaway opposite the track.

No one ever thought, he says, that motorsports would get so big.

“I had to put together a deal where I worked for several tracks in order to be able to make what we considered a reasonable salary," Saxton said. He did some public relations, a little marketing, wrote a newsletter, even led seminars teaching drivers how to get sponsorships.

But for a while, he was known mainly for his announcing, even though, as a child, he was so shy he used to take a failing grade rather than read a book reports in front of the class.

On his first announcing job, a bug flew into his mouth, he says, and the crowd heard him gagging on the loudspeaker. It couldn’t get much worse, he thought, and so he kept on going.

In his career, he has worked for 174 different tracks. He was the only announcer to speak at Madison Square Garden, in New York City, during the venue’s only indoor race. He has also received the Living Legends of Auto Racing’s Russ Moyer Media Award.

He retired as president of the Eastern Motor Sports Press Association three years ago. Now in semi-retirement, he writes columns about motorsports for seven publications nationwide.

“I’m one of those fortunate people and, for many years, I get up in the morning and I do something that I like doing,” he said. “It's not like you’re going to work: You're part of a great sport that involves a lot of great people. ... Part of the fun of the sport for the people was being able to run down to the pit after a race. The drivers would hang around and sign autographs. This doesn't happen anymore."