It’s a Saturday evening at Newport Speedway in Newport, Tennessee. I’m sitting in the grandstands with my parents, watching my little brother, 19-year-old E.J., drive a race at about 80 miles per hour.
Suddenly, out of nowhere, he slams into the wall.
My parents and I immediately stand up as the yellow flag comes out. All the cars start to slow down. The Chevy is scratched and dented on the right side. After what seems like an eternity, about 30 seconds, E.J. radios my father, Enrique, that he’s okay.
“It was terrifying,” said Maggie, my mom. “Yeah, the car is destroyed, but all you care about is your kid being okay.”
E.J. has had success in motorsports over the past five years. He has been racing. His best finish was a third place in the Carolina Pro Late Model series. Our family has spent between $350,000 and $500,000 to make sure he succeeds.
“If we’re going to do this, we’re going to spend money,” said my father. As a result, there isn’t money for a vacation, a car, or anything else. We’re also going to be looking to balance whatever we can to give him the right opportunity.”
Motorsports has many well-known families. The Earnhardts, the Pettys, and the Allisons are the most famous. But, for the Tamayo clan, motorsports wasn’t in the blood. E.J. found it in an unlikely way.
“I was around five years old,” he said. “My parents were watching a NASCAR race. I was walking by the television, and I just stood there for 10 minutes staring at it.”
Our father still remembers that moment clearly.
“I thought to myself, ‘huh, here’s a sport that maybe he’ll like,’” he said. “That was the first time I realized he might have a real interest.”
Shortly after his tenth birthday in August 2016, E.J. began racing go-karts at AMR Homestead-Miami Motorplex. Over the first four years, he won eight races and finished on the podium dozens of times, winning titles in different racing groups.
In November of 2020, E.J. was presented with the opportunity to test a high-speed class of cars called “pro late model” in Hickory. He took it.
“I got really emotional afterwards,” E.J. said. “My dream came true. This is something I worked for, and I still can’t believe it.”
E.J. has competed across the Carolinas, Virginia, and Tennessee since he began racing pro late models in 2021.
Then, an even bigger opportunity presented itself in 2024: the chance to race in the NASCAR ARCA Menards series in Minnesota. EJ finished in sixth in his debut. He then competed in the same series a second time in Pensacola in 2025, but finished towards the back after an issue with the engine.
One big issue that is common in motorsports is sponsorship. It all costs a lot of money.
A pro late model race car typically goes for between $30,000 and $60,000. If you need an engine, it’s another $30,000. Racers require a firesuit, helmet, chest guard, rib guard, a HANS (head and neck support) device, gloves, and shoes, which cost an additional hundred dollars.
“People underestimate the price of everything,” E.J. said. “I see parents who are like ‘I signed up my kid for travel baseball, and it’s so expensive,’ and I laugh at that.”
Sponsorship helps with funding all the aspects of a team, especially when it comes to financial support. The biggest thing is building an internet presence.
“You compare two people on Instagram, and one has a thousand followers, and the other has 20,000,” said E.J., who has 2,265 followers on Instagram. “Who do you think is going to be chosen? The one with 20,000 followers. You can’t just go to a company or send an email immediately asking for a sponsorship.”
David Mancini & Sons Inc. and Dynamic Wellness have briefly sponsored E.J. Neither one is active now. Halley Engineering Contractors is his current sponsor.
“I would say the sponsorship level has been negligible, maybe less than 10% of the total we spent on racing over the years,” my father said. “I knew that we were going to have to be the ones that were financing the operation primarily, but sponsorship would be nice.”
You don’t see many minorities and women competing at all levels of NASCAR. For E.J., representation matters, and there is one racer that sticks out to him.
“I always liked Aric Almirola for sure,” E.J. said. “He’s a Cuban like me. Yeah, he wasn’t born in Cuba, but he’s here from Florida, born to Cuban parents and has Cuban heritage. He studied mechanical engineering, just as I am right now.”
E.J. had the opportunity to interact and compete against Hispanic NASCAR drivers. In 2019, he met Cup series driver and 2016 Xfinity series champion, Daniel Suárez, who is from Mexico, during championship weekend in Homestead. In 2024 and 2025, he competed against another Mexican driver, Andrés Pérez de Lara.
“It was really cool to meet and interact with them,” he said. “Yeah, they’re both Mexican, and I’m Cuban, but the Hispanic representation is still there. It really matters.”
Nowadays, seeing Hispanic drivers is rare. While there are a lot of different nationalities, there is still a small Hispanic community.
“A lot of their families are originally from Cuba, Venezuela, Colombia, hard places to live,” E.J. said. “They sacrificed everything to come here to the U.S. and get a better opportunity, and that really lives within them.”
Maggie says the number one thing she has noticed E.J., despite being naturally introverted, has become more open to others.
“He’s good at talking to people and explaining what he needs,” Maggie said. “He’s matured from the standpoint of knowing what he wants to do in life and where his career path is taking him.”
At the same time, Enrique has seen how his son has been able to react to and handle the adversity that comes with the sport.
“Racing has helped him develop and grow a lot in different ways,” he said. “He doesn’t show it physically when he’s out of the car, but when he’s on the track, he’s become tougher and has been gaining confidence, which is important as a racer.”
When it comes to young children all around the world who want to get into motorsports, E.J. has one piece of advice.
“Just go for it,” he said. “There’s so much you could do aside from racing. You’re making great lifelong relationships and building connections with the right people who might even help your future kids, too.”
