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About Ryan
Entering the Legends scene at the tender age of 12, Ryan achieved great National success campaigning the popular and powerful little open wheel INEX Legends Cars. Winning Young Lion and Semi Pro titles in 2002, 2003 and 2004, Ellis toured the nation in 2005 as a member of INEX’s elite Legends Pro division, capturing the 2005 Virginia State Pro Championship and finishing 4th in the National Pro Series. Ellis has won dozens of Legends features on the Bullrings of Virginia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Ohio. Even now, Ryan returns to the ovals with his Legends Car several times each year, and proves without a doubt that he remains the man to beat. A Quarter Midget child, road racing was not his original focus, but his talents when placed behind the wheel of a road-racing kart allowed the young Virginia racer to nonetheless become a two-time State Red Bull Driving Champion, (Ryan was selected to the 2004 and 2005 National Semi-Finals). Now Ellis can often be found practicing his craft at Allsports Grand Prix in Sterling, Virginia, an indoor professional kart racing facility near his Virginia home where he has been employed since age 14 - he currently serves as a staff “Pro” and an instructor at their Kart Racing School. Ryan’s short-lived entry into full-bodied world of NASCAR during 2006 showed undeniable promise. Right out of the box, Ellis was the NASCAR Late Model Stock Car, (LMSC) Rookie pacesetter at his home track; - Manassas’ fabled Old Dominion Speedway. Ellis competed sparingly that spring in both Virginia and North Carolina in NASCAR’s highest Weekly Racing Series division, (he still holds a NASCAR license and occasionally has been known to slip into a Late Model for a race or two each year) . In 2006, when he wasn’t running Late Models, he raced his Legends Car, going Road Racing with the National Auto Sport Association, (NASA) where he won the majority of the events he entered. Ryan won the 2006 NASA Hyperfest/Summit Point event, captured the 2006 NASA Mid Atlantic Legends Road Racing Championship, and lost the inaugural 2006 NASA National Championships at Mid Ohio by a mere 2 feet. Along the way, Ellis established himself as a versatile and supremely talented driver who is a threat to win on any type of track: Dirt, Asphalt Oval, or Road Course. At the end of the 2006 season Ryan was invited, (for the second year in a row) to the 2nd annual Performance Racing Industry National Invitational race at the Orlando Speedworld bullring. In only his second Oval track race of the season with the Legends Car, Ryan qualified in the top ten and was running fifth in the prestigious nationally televised event. In 2007 Ryan Ellis Racing re-established our own internally-managed race programs featuring a Pro Legends Car oval racing entry, and in mid-year we also began contesting a Mazda Spec Miata race car in a partial season of both NASA and SCCA Road Racing. That program led to a full-on 2008 NASA National and Regional Championship chase in the hotly contested Spec Miata class. While Ryan was the dominant driver at the handful of INEX Legends oval track races he entered that year, his focus was really on the NASA Mid Atlantic Spec Miata title chase, where, in his first full year, he finished 2008 as runner-up by the closest of margins. He also was the highest finishing driver from his region at the 2008 NASA Spec Miata Nationals, finished 2nd in the inaugural Mazda Teen Challenge program, and was voted “Driver of the Year” by NASA Mid Atlantic. Quite a year! In February 2009, Ryan was selected in a nation-wide search by Volkswagen of America as one of only 15 new drivers from North America invited to enter their 2009 Jetta TDI Cup series. The series is a ten race, nation-wide program featuring the top young race car drivers from across North America aged 16 through 26. Trained by VW throughout 2009 in the art of being a professional racer, Ryan was proud to represent the world’s 3rd largest automobile manufacturer all across North America! And when he wasn’t racing somewhere in the TDI Cup, Ellis spent the 2009 season racing his beloved Mazda Spec Miatas with NASA out on the West Coast – where he dominated the 2009 Teen Mazda Challenge and won the season Championship. Ryan even raced a bit at Old Dominion Speedway’s fabled 3/8 oval in 2009, winning another Legends race and driving a NASCAR Late Model once again. At the end of the 2009 season Ryan entered the Playboy Mazda MX-5 Cup twin finale(s) at Virginia International Raceway. There he surprised the series regulars by running in the lead pack both days, and posting solid top ten finishes in his first time ever in a MX-5 Cup car. The 2009 season closed with a coveted invite to the Mazdaspeed Motorsports Development MX-5 Cup Shootout, where Ryan, (the youngest of the 5 finalists) impressed once again and finished as the runner-up in the closest competition ever! Ryan’s personal street car is a 2007 Mazda RX-8. When not racing, Ellis can be found at George Mason University , (GMU) where he is a sophomore majoring in Business Marketing. Ryan currently plays on the GMU Inline Hockey Team, and he has also played with the Potomac Mavericks - a Professional Inline Hockey Association Minor League hockey club. After racing, the sport is Ryan’s second love, having played organized hockey continuously since age 6. He’s a huge Washington Capitals fan.
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Ellis Racing History The story of Ellis Racing can be traced back to the early 1940s when Ryan’s grandfather, Vic Ellis, began driving a make-shift quarter midget near the family home in Northern Illinois. The vehicle, powered by a Maytag engine, was built by Vic’s father for his son, who, (with no racetracks nearby to run it on) drove it around their hometown gas station and football field. Years later, Vic and his new brother in law would set out to turn an old, abandoned Model A chassis into a Midget racecar, building it themselves in a converted barn and testing it in the cornfields surrounding his father in law’s farm. The homemade Midget
racer served them well in those early days, but eventually Vic purchased a
state-of–the-art Kurtis-Kraft Midget chassis and installed a Ford engine
under the hood. One thing led to another and by the 50’s Vic had emerged as a
very successful professional Midget driver, racing all over the Midwestern
states. 1952 would prove to be a pivotal year for Ellis as he captured the
prestigious Badger Midget Championship at the hallowed Angel Park Speedway.
That championship, and continued success in the Midget ranks eventually
spring-boarded his career to greater heights with the top national racing
organization of the day, the AAA “Big Cars”. Driving the GAPCO Sprint Car,
(made famous by a young Mario Andretti), Vic became a front-runner in the AAA
Sprinters, racing his Dodge-powered machine against the likes of legends such
as AJ Foyt until Vic met his untimely death in a Sprint Car in the summer of
1958. Cars being somewhat inaccessible to Jim as a young teenager, he would begin his racing career in motorcycles at the age of 14. Through paper routes and lawn mowing jobs, Jim earned enough money to buy his first true motocross motorcycle. Sneaking away from home with the aid of some older friends and a pickup truck, he began a career that saw him become a top AMA Motocrosser in the Midwest region. His father’s unfortunate fate meant that Jim never really enjoyed the outward support of his family in these endeavors. But Jim stubbornly continued to follow his dream on his own, making his choice of college based on a desire to race motorcycles with the AMA year-round, and the opportunity to hang out with Stan Fox, a family friend, rising professional midget racer and a student at Arizona State. So it was off to Arizona in 1976. In his freshman year at ASU Jim suffered a serious motocross accident at Canyon Raceway outside of Phoenix that essentially ended his career on two wheels. The following summer, Jim gathered up his savings and bought a used Formula Ford, with trailer, for the sum of $3000. He would use that old car to win a Rookie of the Year title, and took it on the road to SCCA Pro Formula Ford events where he managed to finish regularly in the top ten on a college student’s budget. All the while, Jim rarely missed a Saturday night race with his oval track buddies at Manzanita Speedway on the south side of Phoenix. Years passed, Jim moved to Los Angeles after college but there was always racing. Staying with SCCA road racing, Ellis would go on to win two National titles while living in the LA area and driving the all-conquering KBS factory team F440s for Mike and Sandy Keirns. And when he wasn’t road racing, he was hanging out with the USAC and visiting Badger Midget guys at Ascot Park or Ventura Raceway. A horrific accident in the KBS factory prototype at Riverside in 1988 pushed Jim out of the formula car ranks and into SCCA’s new Pro Sports Renault division. There he won several National Pro races before a 1993 job transfer brought Jim and his young family to Virginia. Before leaving LA his “adopted parents”, the Keirns, gave Jim a new KBS F440 chassis as a gift, which he put to good use over the next two years racing in the Virginia-based SCCA’s MARRS series. After many individual race wins, a mechanical problem would cause Ellis to lose the 1995 MARRS Championship by a single point in the last race of the season. That season would turn out to be Jim’s last as a regular series contender. Somewhat innocently, a Quarter Midget had entered the Ellis household that same year and that’s when the latest generation of the racing Ellis’ stepped forward to pursue his destiny. In the spring of 1995 Ryan Ellis began his own, third generation race driving career at age 4, and the rest, as they say, is history... |
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