SIX NATIONS – By day Alex Hill is a normal and active 13-year-old, Grade 9 student at Assumption College in Brantford. But on the weekends she dawns her fireproof suit, pops on a helmet, slides behind the wheel and turns into Alex Hill, racecar driver.
Alex started driving carts when she was nine years old at Ohsweken Speedway’s go cart track.
“My dad, (Miles Hill) had a racecar there,” she recalls. “I was watching on Friday nights and started to like it and wanted to start racing.”
Alex actually began racing competitively at Tillsonburg Raceway, when she was 11, where she won the division title in her first year.
“I was a little nervous in my first race,” she laughs, “and I didn’t go that fast, but once I got used to it I started going faster.”
In the beginning she drove a highly modified go-cart with a single gear. Now, Alex has just started into the next level, the 600 Micro-Sprints. At that level the cars go around 80 or 90 km/h and are equipped with transmissions and the driver must shift through the gears.
“I’m just learning that,” she says.
She recently competed at the Micro-Sprint level in Geneva, New York, at Paradise Speedway.
Hill has already accumulated an impressive record since her first race, at 9 years of age, which she won on August 25th, of 2009. That same year she won her second first place ribbon on September 27th. She qualified with the fastest time, at 9.7 seconds, in the beginner’s category.
In 2010, Hill won her first race on July 6th, and the following racing season she came in 3rd in the Junior Summer Series, and did it again in 2011.
At the ripe old age of 12, Hill moved up to the Sr. level and became the Senior Spring Series Champion, and came in 3rd in the Senior Summer Series, as well as the Endurance 100 Lap race.
This year, at 13, Alex Hill now has four top three finishes at Paradise Speedway, in Geneva, N.Y.
“I’m getting comfortable with shifting,” says Alex. “I’ve stalled out a couple of times, but it’s getting better.”
She was also given honourable mention as a young driver to watch in an article published in Inside Track Motorsport News Magazine.
Since the 600 micro-sprints are hugely popular in the US, most of the racing she will do in that category will require a considerable amount of travel.
“We are very fortunate to have the Ohsweken Speedway here at Six Nations,” says Miles who is managing her career. “That is only 10 minutes away, rather than the three or four hours it takes to go race in the States.”
Surprisingly enough, Alex is not the only young driver in her Grade 9 class at Assumption.
Brantford’s Dale Westbrook races against her and travels with the Hill racing team, which also includes four competitive sprint cars.
Alex will be turning 14 this December and her dad predicts she will also be turning pro either around that time or early next summer. At that point, she will be making money for herself and the team as a professional racecar driver.
Featured image: To all intents and purposes, 13-year-old Alex Hill, a Grade 9 student at Assumption College in Brantford, is a perfectly normal young teen. But there is something very different about her. On the weekends, Hill is a competitive racecar driver who is attracting a lot of attention in race circles. She is seen here with a picture of herself behind the wheel of the cart she began racing in when she was only nine. (Photo by Jim Windle)
Only 13 years old, Alex races in the 600 micro-sprints circuit alongside adult drivers in the Sr. Series and has had four top three finishes at Paradise Speedway in Geneva, New York.
what an awesome sport, sure wish I had that when i was a kid, Like real life mario kart.