SPRINT CAR MAKES DREAMS COME TRUE Not everyone gets the opportunity to live out their childhood dreams. But if you work hard and, as it was in the case of Scott Chatwin, make the right friends, you might be lucky enough to make them a reality. Scott owns Merger Contracting, an asphalt business that runs its own truck repair and service workshop. He realised his childhood dream when he got to compete in his first sprint car race in 2015. Now he has his own sprint car and team. Scott’s passion for sprint car racing started when his mum would take him to the Claremont Speedway in Western Australia when he was about nine years old. “It was something that we both looked forward to,” he said. “She enjoyed it, but I never thought that it would get to this point.” So, how did his dream come true? Scott had a good mate who was running cars for Wormall who hit him up to be a driver. Scott agreed and, with only a little experience under his belt (driving a sprint car on a sponsors’ driving day), entered his first race as a Wormall driver. 1 6 CAPRICORN IGNITION AUGUST 2022
“I think I was pretty well overwhelmed because there’s mud flying around and you’re trying to pull a tear off your helmet and get around the track,” he said. “I remember it being pretty daunting to start with, but I’m not one to give in, so I stuck with it and I had a couple of decent crashes, but I was still determined to keep going.” Scott eventually left Wormall to start his own team: Merger Motorsport. He managed to finish in the top 10 within two seasons. But life got too busy for the owner of three businesses and crashes too expensive, so he bowed out of driving in 2019. Kris Coyle now drives the purpose-built Merger Motorsport car, which runs a 410 cubic-inch motor that can produce about 950 horsepower. It weighs about 700 kg, including the driver. The car’s wings are made of light-aircraft aluminium and the panels are lightweight fiberglass and aluminium. Its power-to-weight ratio is comparable to a Formula One race car.
