Naperville Central senior Hunter Ernst once found his home in the chalk filled air of the gymnasium. After he sustained a chronic wrist injury in his junior year of high school, Ernst found a new home on the racetrack.
“I needed a new competitive outlet because I didn’t do gymnastics anymore and that had always been my thing,” Ernst said. “I was really good at gymnastics, I competed and traveled the country doing that. I wanted something new, and that’s how I got into go-kart racing.”
Similar to his lifelong love of gymnastics, which started when he was four years old, Ernst has always had an interest in cars.
“Hunter has always been really curious about things,” Ernst’s brother Lake Ernst said. “He tinkered with engines and things like that, trying to figure out how to make them work. He also started watching different racing events like Formula 1 and NASCAR. That’s really what got him excited about [go-karting.]”
Ernst’s interest in go-karting took off after buying a racing simulator after his injury.
“It’s considered to be as close as you can get to actually driving that car from the comfort of your home,” Ernst said.
A racing simulator is a game software you can hook up to a computer, accurately simulating real life racing, often used by real professional drivers to train for real life.
“You think, ‘It’s not that hard to drive a car around a track,’ but if everyone’s trying to do it as fast as they can, you have to do it faster than all those guys,” Ernst said. “There are techniques that you can do, and through the sim, you’re able to make mistakes, try techniques and perfect them.”
After a few months of using the simulator, Ernst wanted to take his racing to the next level, and test his skills at Autobahn, a karting track in Joliet.
During his first race at the track, Ernst was up against people who had been racing for years.
“I didn’t have my own helmet, gloves, shoes, anything,” Ernst said. “A bunch of these guys were fully suited up with cool helmets, cool gloves, cool shoes and actual race attire. So I put on the rental helmet and [my] garden gloves. [Before the race] I was alone in a corner, I was talking to my mom, and I said, ‘I’m gonna show them.’”
Ernst qualified for first, securing the fastest time in a preliminary round, which determined his starting position for the main race.
“They called me up, and they’re like, ‘get in line, you’re first,’” Ernst said. “I remember being so surprised. I was just dumbfounded that I had done that well.”
Each race begins with a rolling start, where the racers complete one lap around the track, slow down near the start line and wait for the starter to wave the green flag.
“As you’re coming around the final corner, you watch the guy who waves the flag,” Ernst said. “He’s gonna surprise you, he’s gonna wave the green flag at a random time. There’s anticipation. If you go too early, you get penalized. If you go too late, you get screwed.”
In his first race, after the starter waved his flag, Ernst’s delayed reaction caused him to fall to the back, dropping from first to seventh by the first turn.
“It’s another thing to be fast when there’s dudes next to you who aren’t nice, who are gonna bump into you, who aren’t gonna care for your space, and they’re gonna drive like jerks,” Ernst said. “The simulator can only teach you so much when it’s real life. It’s scary to do dangerous moves. [I had to] gain the courage to do aggressive stuff and kind of be a jerk right back to them.”
Ernst said his competitors were surprised to discover after the race that it was his first time competing.
“It was so cool that I was able to go to the track and shock people, that was a really cool feeling,” Ernst said.
Lake Ernst often attends his brother’s races, as well as other friends and family members.
“It’s exciting watching my brother, he [goes and] kicks butt of people that are much older than him, it’s really a thrill watching him and seeing him and how much he loves it,” Lake Ernst said.
While Ernst isn’t on the track, he works on building his own go-kart in his grandmother’s garage.
“I had the idea of building my own go-kart only using Facebook marketplace [parts] because it’s really cheap,” Ernst said.
After finding a shell for $200, his grandma paid for the engine and the project took off.
“It’s still a work in progress, for sure,” Ernst said. “I’ve realized sourcing everything on Facebook is a lot harder when you’re actually building something from scratch. I ordered a part a month or two ago, and it didn’t fit, and then I wasted $20 because they wouldn’t return it. So that’s annoying, but it’s coming together, it’s gonna be something I can rip around the streets.”
In the future, Ernst hopes to join his college’s Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) to build and race a Formula 1 style car.
“[I take] advantage of every minute I have [on the track], not goofing around,” Ernst said. “As silly as it is to take this so seriously, it’s something I like to do as a hobby, or as a career.”
