Jenna Prather
(by Jenna Prather) Ian Madsen, 2017 410 points champion, 33, from Sydney Australia has been racing since 2004 and has been doing it professionally for the past 5-6 years after getting a ride with KCP Racing and his career has taken off from there.
Both Ian’s brother, Kerry Madsen, and his father, Joe Madsen, both raced, but Ian himself never really got into it until he was 14 or 15.
“Yeah, I caught the bug and there was no way out at that point,” He commented. “I did a lot of crewing for Kerry and then came over here in 2003, and did a couple years of World of Outlaws crewing for Kerry and I didn’t know if the opportunity would ever be there to actually race myself with money being pretty tight. But I got to put in a few laps at the end of the year in Sydney and that’s when I decided that ‘Hey, this is pretty cool, I wanna do this instead of working on them,’”
Ian’s accomplishments within racing stick out in his mind when he thinks about his favorite times within the sport. “The Knoxville championships are pretty special, World of Outlaws wins, I won a $50,000 race in Sydney in 2013, that was pretty cool. Even when I started out racing there are some really good memories because it was kind of going to the racetrack with just my buddies helping me and just going out every Saturday and having fun.”
Ian’s life revolves around racing currently and he says that there isn’t much of a life away from racing. Going from February until November in America and then In November we have a few weeks off, which I wouldn’t even call a few weeks because we’re still getting stuff ready for next year, and then we usually take off for Australia and race down there for six weeks.
“It sort of a ‘If you’re in you’re in, if you’re out, you’re out.’ I don’t really think you should be half-in half-out and that’s pretty much all that there is in my life. Hanging out with friends when I can, having a few beers, and that’s about it. I figure there’s plenty of time for the other stuff when I’m done,”
Helping him out through it all is his crew chief, Kyle Ripper, from Pennsylvania, jumping on board with them in 2015. “I’ve really clicked with him since he’s been on board and get along with him really well away from the racetrack as well. It’s been a really cool combination and I hope to keep him around for a long time,” Mark Angerett Jr., also from Pennsylvania, on since 2016, and they just recently added a third man, Jason Tertrault. “He’s worked out really good for us as well. He’s a young kid and a really hard worker.”
Aside from his brother and father, no one else in the Madsen family is too involved in racing like Ian is. “But my whole family, my cousins, aunties, and uncles, they always come to watch Kerry and I race and they really love it as well,”
Ian announced that he would be travelling with the World of Outlaws for the 2018 season so I took the opportunity to ask him a little bit about that.
“I just feel like that ever since we’ve started this team it’s been a natural progression that we’ve kind of wanted to do more and more every year and while the last few years have been great, we’ve gotten quite a few wins here in the Midwest and picked up a few of those Knoxville championships, and I think that everyone involved on the team thought it was the right decision to make and the right time to do it and we feel like we’ve finally got the team to where it should be very competitive out there and it’s been a big dream of mine since I started racing. Obviously you always want to be racing with the pinnacle of the sport and, uh, it should be exciting. As for goals, I don’t really have any goals for this year. We just want to go out and do the best we can and see where we are at the end of the year. I did a lot of years out there as a crew member so I know how tough and grueling it is out there so if we can be competitive every night that’s the main goal. There’s going to be a lot of new tracks out there for us, some different scenarios, so we’ll just have to see how it plays out,”
We wish Ian luck this season and hope to see him prevail within the sport that means so much to him.