Odie Fremin
May 5, 2015Morgan City rodeo gives money to schools
May 5, 2015
Kevin Helms is not resting on his automotive laurels.
Driving for the Houma’s Southland Dodge racing team, the Michigan native hopes to bring his 2010 Dodge to a fourth victory in the Challenger Lucas Oil Drag Racing Series.
Kevin compares racing to any other sport. Racers, just like athletes during competition, are extremely attuned to the task at hand, he said.
While waiting for the green light, he says, he is in “total focus,” unaware of anything but the final yellow light that precedes it.
A racer, he said, has to hit the gas pedal when he sees the final yellow light, before the green, because the human body’s reaction time coupled with the mechanics of the vehicle actually accelerating could take close to a half-second.
Once off and running, Kevin said, he is centered on the race and nothing more.
He might, he confessed, sometimes use a fleeting moment to take stock of where he is.
“You come around the corner, and there’s literally 50,000 people in the stands and there’s just you and one other guy,” Helms said. “I always let myself enjoy that moment because it doesn’t happen very often. You get to take a peek and then you just shut it all out and focus on what you’ve got to do.”
Helms has a life off the track, however, and away from Southland Dodge, with wife Elena and daughters Kaylee, who is 5-years-old, and 6-month-old Emily.
Elena and Kaylee love seeing him race, with Emily not quite old enough to appreciate it yet. And Kaylee has told him she wants to be a racer one day “but not right now.”
“She likes cheering for daddy,” he said of Kaylee. “But she doesn’t like when daddy turns the car on.”
Kevin Helms pops a wheelie in his ’69 Chevrolet Camaro on the track. Helms won two stock eliminator Mac Tools U.S. Nationals at Lucas Oil Raceway back-to-back in ’98 and ’99 with this car. He won again in 2001.
