Richard Osborne called Larry Ebert the “Yoda of Quarter Midget Racing,” and the mechanic/mentor certainly sounded the part of the renowned, albeit short, Jedi master from the “Star Wars” movies.

“There’s an old saying in racing: If you want to finish first, first you must finish,” Ebert said.

It may be an old saying, but it has been taken to heart by one who is very young: 8-year-old Clintonville resident Trey Osborne, the son of Richard Osborne and local real estate agent Donna Leigh-Osborne.

“I’ve been a gearhead, always into cars, and Trey in particular always seemed to demonstrate a similar interest,” said Richard Osborne, North American sales manager for California-based electronics company Machine Vision Products.

Which explains why, when he found a go-kart at a garage sale for $50 two years ago, he didn’t hesitate to bring it home, Leigh-Osborne said. Richard and Trey began driving the thing around in the backyard, “wearing out the grass and the gravel driveway, etc.,” she said.

“We have, like, an oval through the grass all the time,” Leigh-Osborne added.

The motorized cart only served to further spur Trey’s interest in all things racing.

“It’s really fun,” he said last week. “It’s kind of hard to explain. I just thought it was fun and then I started it.”

Enter Larry Ebert, the owner of Beechwold Automotive and currently on the board of directors of the Buckeye Quarter Midget Racing Association.

As the name implies, these are race cars a quarter the scale of midget vehicles used in racing.

“Unlike go-karts, Quarter Midgets feature full four-wheel independent suspension and full roll cages,” according to the website of the 52-year-old Capitol Quarter Midget Association in Lansing, Mich. “Seatbelts and shoulder harnesses are mandatory. Quarter Midgets can attain speeds of 20 to 40 miles per hour.

“The benefits are virtually immeasurable. It’s a family sport; all races are staffed and run by family volunteers from local tracks. Drivers develop physical skills such as coordination, timing, alertness and basic mechanical theory. Internal strength is developed through sportsmanship, self-reliance, accomplishment and recognition. It’s just plain fun.”

Seeing how much “just plain fun” Trey was having with the go-kart, Osborne sought out Ebert at his automotive repair operation behind Weiland’s Gourmet Market on Indianola Avenue. Osborne said his son was “just mad for racing,” Ebert recalled.

“Which can be typical little boy,” he added.

After discussing the ins and outs of getting Trey involved in Quarter Midget Racing with Ebert, the boy’s parents thought about it for several months. Then Richard Osborne returned, said they’d bought a car for Trey and needed Ebert’s help in getting him started.

The first thing to do was take the boy and his new vehicle to the Columbus Motor Speedway on Williams Road to let him drive around the track at increasing speeds, Ebert said.

“He seemed to be very comfortable with it,” according to Ebert.

“Trey absolutely loves it,” his mother said.

Younger brother Holden, not so much.

“He’d rather be the pit crew,” Leigh-Osborne said.

“Being as they are very close to my shop and I am a Clintonville resident as well, there’s kind of a local interest there,” “So I sort of kept an eye on them.

“He was progressing well. He was progressing at a major pace.”

This past racing season, which began in May and concluded last month, Trey competed in three different classes, finishing within the top three in points in two different regional series, according to his proud papa.

“I did pretty good, I guess,” Trey put in.

“I think from a parent’s perspective, watching your children succeed is, I don’t know that there’s anything more gratifying,” Osborne said. “When they succeed in something they truly have a passion for É absolutely that’s exciting, but the key is to continue to help them learn and to grow in everything they do.

“Obviously, school work comes first.”

“He wants to be a race car driver, and he knows that you’re not a race car driver all your life so after the racing he wants to design race cars.” Leigh-Osborne said.

“I don’t really like anything but this,” Trey said.

“The key is, and I’m trying to inject a bit of realism, he says he wants to be a big-time race car driver like his hero Tony Stewart in NASCAR, and we want to try to do everything we can to help him get there, but it’s highly competitive and ultimately sponsorship dollars become crucial to this,” Osborne said. “There are a lot of good drivers out there who never get to the top because they can’t get the funding.”

Ebert agreed.

“The unfortunate thing here is that he is a very, very capable and skilled driver, but sometimes it takes something more than just being a capable and skilled driver” he said. “The further you move up to in this sport — and he’s years from that now — the more you’re connected to someone else’s wallet dictates how successful he will be.

“He has the skill set, but he will live or die on his sponsorships.”

Ebert remembers young Trey at a race in Toledo, when he proved that finishing first requires first finishing the race.

Trey was running in third, when the two boys in front of him pushed their cars to the limit of their skills, and both crashed, Ebert said. Once Trey inherited the lead with five or six laps to go, his mentor said, the boy “ran a very consistent and proper line.”

“He was very measured in everything he was doing,” Ebert said. “I told him after the race, ‘Here’s proof that the nice guys do win.’”

kparks@thisweeknews.com

www.ThisWeekNews.com