FOR DAVID LATOUR AND HIS FAMILY, RACING AND FAMILY TIME ARE ONE AND THE SAME
It has often been said that racing is a family sport. The Latour family takes this quite literally. Susan Latour and her husband David are the Crew Chiefs for their 21-year-old son David, Jr., also known as D.J. and his younger brother Dillon is a former racer who now turns wrenches for his older brother. � Currently entering his sixthseason of Late Model racing, David is preparing for a run at the 2012 PASS South Late Model Touring Series Rookie of the Year title. But in order to appreciate where David is now, you have
to look back at where he’s been. The current chapter of David’s
motorsports life goes back four years to a season of change both on
and off the track, built around a life-changing decision made by his
parents. “I really didn’t know what I was doing out there at first,” Latour said, referring to the opening of his rookie late model season. “I didn’t know what line to run or anything. I’d watch the fast guys and try to run their line, but it wasn’t working for me and I was struggling.” About midway through the season, Latour and his family learned of a NASCAR driver development program that had members racing weekly at Hickory. “Kyle Moon was one of the guys up front at Hickory and we got talking with him and learned that he was in the Team Full Throttle PR and Development Program,” Latour explained. “I also got talking with Tom (Baker, TFT founder and head coach), and then kept talking to him for a few weeks. He tested me a bit with my driving and he liked the way I took advice and listened to what he was saying.” David immediately improved. With the on- and off-track coaching of Team Full Throttle and the additional knowledge added to his crew, Latour became a consistent top-five runner at Hickory almost overnight. “It was really something to see,” Baker said. “We like to joke that at first everyone at Hickory was nervous to see David show up because of his unpredictable driving style. Now, they’re still nervous, but it’s because he’s one of the fastest cars at the track.” The improvement he displayed with our coaching was just outstanding. He almost immediately became one of the fastest runners at Hickory, and not just some of the time, but every week. David has come a long way and done a tremendous job.” Growing up on Long Island, David began as a quarter-midget racer. The Latours, including David’s younger brother, Dillon, travelled to tracks around the country to race their open-wheel cars and accomplished a good amount of success in doing so. “We went to Ohio and Georgia and Kansas and so many other places, too,” Dave Sr. said. “Our home track was in Connecticut. Living on Long Island, we’d leave our house at about 4 a.m. to beat the (New York) city traffic. It was crazy, but we did it to race. It’s what we all wanted to do.” Latour’s last quarter-midget race was the 2006 Grands, which is the biggest annual quarter-midget event of the season, in New Jersey. Already racing micro-sprints and planning the move to North Carolina, the race was a one-time deal to drive for respected Connecticut quarter-midget owner Jimmy Wilson. Tragically, just a couple of weeks before David was slated to drive his car in the Grands, Wilson died of a heart attack. “The race had a lot of extra motivation for me because the of Jimmy Wilson’s death. We didn’t know if we should race or not, but his son said to race because that’s what Jimmy would’ve wanted. We went into it figuring it would probably be the last quarter-midget race I would run, so between that and his death, it was a pretty emotional weekend. In a scenario that couldn’t have been written better by a Hollywood screenwriter, Latour took Wilson’s 20-year-old car and won the Jr. Half class. “We went out and set quick time, a new track record, and won the race. The car was really old but it sure was fast. We’ll always remember that weekend,” David said. Following his quarter-midget career, which included wins against the likes of Joey Lagano and Bobby Santos III, Latour made the move to dirt racing in the form of a 600cc micro-sprint. Latour raced the micro-sprints for less than two years at tracks such as Whip City Speedway in Massachusetts and Lanco Speedway in Pennsylvania against arguably the best micro-sprint competition in the country. Latour never accomplished the elusive first feature victory in the micro-sprints, admitting he didn’t race them long enough to get completely comfortable. “We won a heat race, and that was it. We only raced them for a few races at the end of ’05 and then about half the season in ’06. We had some good runs – I remember one night we ran third but the right-rear shock pin fell out with three to go – but we didn’t race them long enough to get any real accomplishment. I think we only did about 15 races total,” said David. The Latours admit they enjoyed the experience, but found themselves growing tired with the continuous hassle living on the Long Island peninsula presented. “After 9/11, we got really worried,” Dave Sr. began. “If something like that happened again, we were afraid it was going to hit even closer to home, and as it was we were stuck on the island for over a week (when 9/11 occurred). “Even disregarding that situation, we were traveling four and five hours to get to a race track and leaving at ridiculous hours to beat the traffic, and it was just starting to take its toll on all of us.” Then fate intervened and presented David Sr. with an opportunity that would change the family’s direction on and off the track. “In ’06, I went down to North Carolina to tour Golding Farms Foods, Inc., and got talking with one of the managers. By the end of my time there, he offered me a job. I told Sue, and she said, ‘Well you took it, didn’t you?’ I called him and said we’ll be down as soon as we can. That’s how we ended up in Advance, North Carolina,” he remembers with a smile. Although David was having a great time whipping the micro-sprint around northeastern dirt tracks, he agreed with his family’s decision. “I loved racing the micro-sprint and I was really sad when we sold it, but we were driving four hours just to get to our home track and if it looked like rain we wouldn’t go and then they might race and we’d miss it; it got to be a tough deal. In North Carolina, there are about six weekly (late model) tracks within two hours of our house. The seasons are longer and we’re where we need to be if I want to get to NASCAR, so it just seemed like the right fit,” says David. Getting to NASCAR, David says, is still the goal. “Racing in NASCAR is a lot of the reason why we came down here. We know that there are no guarantees and it takes a lot of commitment and probably some luck, too, but I’ve made the commitment and we’re doing the best we can to run well right now and get the results we need in order to move up the ladder,” Latour explained. Team Full Throttle Founder Tom Baker has seen the progress Latour has made since joining the program and acknowledges the 19-year-old racer and his family as being highly-respected members of TFT. “The Latours have done it right,” says Baker. “David has listened to what we’ve told him and improved greatly. He works hard presenting himself in a positive manner and behind the scenes he works hard wrenching on the car. He’s putting 100-percent effort into his racing and he’s getting results. We’re really proud of him.” David Latour has his sights set higher for 2011 and beyond, as the soft-spoken racer continues to exemplify what Team Full Throttle is all about – teamwork, leadership, devotion to the sport, and the willingness work hard and in order to succeed. |