Although almost 40 years have passed, former sprint racer Tim Gee remembers the evening of May 13, 1983 as if it were yesterday.
“We won our first World of Outlaws race, but it didn’t get recognized for a while because it was the first night of a two-day event,” Gee, now 65, recently told SPEED SPORT about that win at USA 131 Speedway in Martin, Mich. “That was quite a big achievement for us.
“Back then they would take the six fastest cars, flip them over and put them on the front of the feature – there was no dash. We managed to make that reversal (qualified fourth) and I think we started third. I’m behind Sammy Swindell and Shane Carson and we won that race so I think it was a pretty legitimate win.
“I took the lead from Carson on lap three and I remember it was around lap 15 and I hadn’t been passed yet. I gritted my teeth, put my hand on the steering wheel, and slammed on the accelerator as hard as I could. I think: ‘I have five laps left and I won’t be overtaken.’ And I managed to fail.”
With this win in No. 88 Yukon Freight entry of his family, Gee, who was born and raised in Whitehorse, Yukon, became the first Canadian driver to win a World of Outlaws Sprint Car Series feature. Two months later he added a second win at Indiana’s Paragon Speedway. Gee only held the award until July 28, 2015, when fellow Canadian Stewart Friesen joined the elite club.
Gee’s father, Gordie, got into the sport by sponsoring a local racer and later became a driver and car owner.
“When I was a kid, I always thought about racing. Don’t ask me how I thought about racing for a living because when I was young my hometown didn’t have racing,” Gee recalled. “Anyway, I decided I wanted to be a racer and I realized I couldn’t do that from Whitehorse, so I had to travel south.
“I chose Edmonton, Alberta, which is 1,300 miles from Whitehorse,” added Gee. “There were several tracks in the area; mostly asphalt races. Our neighboring province – British Columbia – probably had a dozen racetracks that way. My father owned a trucking company and I drove a truck for my father when I was younger, so I moved to Edmonton from Whitehorse to pursue my dream of racing.
“We used to drive from Edmonton to Skagit, Washington to race. We rest in Winnipeg, Manitoba; down in Great Falls, Mont.; and the world of outlaws was still in its infancy when we first heard about it. In 1978 I went to Skagit to watch the Dirt Cup and the World of Outlaws riders were there and they were undoubtedly the class of the field. That’s when we first saw professional dirt sprint car racing and thought, ‘This is it. This is where we want to be.”
“So we started traveling a little further south all the time,” Gee continued. “We ended up on the west coast in 1980. We got to know Ted Johnson a little and he invited us to follow the group. We started in Florida in 1981 and continued World of Outlaws for the next seven years.”
Statistics from World of Outlaws show that Gee made 276 consecutive starts, with two wins, 20 top 5 finishes and 100 top 10 finishes. His best season in points came in 1986 when he finished seventh.
“Racing with World of Outlaws was incredibly tough, but it wasn’t just Steve Kinser. He was definitely the king back then, but if you could beat Steve Kinser, you had to beat Sammy Swindell, Doug Wolfgang, Ronnie Shuman and Shane Carson,” Gee said. “It was really tough. It was an extremely steep learning curve.
“About year three or four we started catching up a bit on how to make our cars work better and how to become a little bit better racers. Unfortunately, at the time, the prize for racing was so popular and so high that it seemed like the budget had doubled from year to year.”
Tim Gee (right) and his son Skylar at Knoxville Raceway. (Photo by Paul Arch)
The economics of racing eventually forced Gee to leave his adopted home of Jamestown, Indiana, and return to Canada.
“It was 1990 and I didn’t race much. I couldn’t afford to race my own stuff. I got to drive a couple of race cars at the local level and couldn’t live with that,” Gee remarked. “A friend of mine from Edmonton came to the PRI show. He told me about a brand new racetrack he was involved with that was being built in Edmonton, Alberta – right by the international airport there. It was a big circuit – drag strip, dirt oval, street course, the whole range.
“I’ve been thinking about going back to Canada and thought this would be a good opportunity to go back there and do some racing,” continued Gee. “I’ve always wanted to have my own race shop, sell race car parts and work on race cars and that’s what we ended up doing.”
In 1991, Gee and his wife Ruth opened Gee and Gee Racing in Leduc, Alberta. The various companies under this umbrella have been active for more than three decades.
“We decided about four years ago that we’d been in this business long enough that maybe it was time to shut it down and do something else,” Gee said. “Then the oil crisis died down and the next year COVID came along and that ruined things for a couple of years. It wasn’t the best time to sell or close a business, but we decided it was time to do something different.
Tyler Courtney (7) & Skylar Gee (99) at Fremont (Ohio) Speedway (Photo by Paul Arch)
“Our son Skylar has been racing down here (in the US) for four years now. So we always wanted to come down and spend some time with him.”
The Gees sold the Race Shop business and Hoosier Tire dealership and closed the parts business in May. This fall, they loaded up the RV and headed to Hillsboro, Ohio, to live with their 23-year-old son, who drives a winged sprint car for Logan Fenton Racing.
“I’m thrilled that he loves sprint car racing as much as I do. It definitely gives us common ground for a father-son relationship,” noted Tim Gee. “We are here with him and involved in it. For me, that has much more value than the fact that he is continuing our family racing tradition. My wife and I really enjoy the time we spend with him.”
Gee says a trip home to Whitehorse is planned during the winter months.
“My mother still has a place up there and my wife Ruth, her family are all from Whitehorse as well,” Gee said. “We’re semi-retired now and going back to Whitehorse was always something we talked about. We don’t have a place there yet, but we’re looking – somewhere nice and quiet where we can retire.”
This story appeared in the December 28 issue of SPEED SPORT Insider.
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