kart track
SPOTLIGHT
Words by Chris Romano Photos by Dave Higgins
CJ Sweatt runs in the Open Division.
MOUNTAIN CREEK SPEEDWAY A dirt kart track in rural North Carolina and a former midget racer from Long Island. It’s been a long, strange trip. Derek Pernesiglio and his brother Pete raced the family midget in Northeast Midget Association events before Derek moved south to begin a career in television. The family business is still thriving with his nephew Michael now racing a NEMA Lite. Pernesiglio ultimately became a much sought after pit road reporter for NBCSN’s coverage of the Whelen Modified Tour and the K&N Series, along
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with many track announcing gigs. He still had the racing bug, however, and on off weekends raced an outlaw kart, which led him to Mountain Creek Speedway in Catawba, North Carolina. “The track is about 43 years old,” said Pernesiglio. “What people don’t realize is that the track sits on a historic family farm. You’ve got to travel through about a mile of cow pasture to get to the track. It is nestled in the beginning of the Catawba Mountains at the base of Mountain Creek, hence the name Mountain Creek Speedway.”
DIRT EMPIRE MAGAZINE • ISSUE 04 - 2021
“The track is owned by Adam and Rebecca Stewart. They are people that just like racing. They made this track on their property to race go-karts and ATVs. That’s really all it was for, but then it started to evolve and more people began coming out to the track. At first, it was just go-karts, but then the Stewarts went to the East Coast Nationals at the Iredell County Fair which is the only outlaw kart race they run there.” It was there they met Kyle Beattie, who owns SKE Chassis, a premier kart builder, and, according to Pernesiglio,
