As Jerry Coons Jr. intently watched his teenage son, Cale, put his race car through its paces, he could be excused for lapsing into a moment of reverie. Decades ago, he was subjected to an equal level of scrutiny.
His father had once wheeled powerful open-wheel cars throughout the great Southwest before focusing his attention on work and family. Young Jerry often accompanied his dad to the track and quickly became more than a spectator.
Jerry Coons Sr. doesn’t have to work that hard to recall the events that led to his son’s first steps in the sport.
“One day we were in Phoenix and we went and watched the quarter midgets race at South Mountain Speedway and he expressed an interest,” the elder Coons recalled. “Jerry asked a lot of very good questions. Even then he was serious about it and when we got into midgets, he did very well.”
At the time when Coons Jr. began racing, USAC had a strong midget program in Arizona but the rules were firm. You had to be 18 years old to race with USAC, or 16 years old and legally emancipated.
Jerry Coons Jr. raced a handful of dates at Manzanita Speedway when he was 13 and in his 14th year, he claimed his first feature victory. Father and son simply lied about his age.
“If you look back at some of the old USAC yearbooks, it says I was born in 1970 when I was really born in 1972,” Coons acknowledged with a laugh.
Not everyone was fooled, particularly those who had competed in quarter midgets with the Coons family. The word got out.
USAC great and Arizona native Roger McCluskey was an old friend of Jerry Coons Sr. and he raised a questioning eyebrow. However, the one man who was aware of the ruse was Manzanita Speedway’s Keith Hall.
When Hall inquired, the elder Coons had no choice but tell the truth. Then, a funny thing happened, Hall offered a compromise.
“Keith and I talked and he said go ahead and bring him up,” Coons recalled. “We will let him race but if I figure out, he has no business being here I will send him home. Well, he never got sent home.”
Jerry Coons Jr. never turned back. He forged a career that is the envy of many. He is a member of USAC’s Triple Crown club by virtue of winning the national championship in midgets, sprint cars and the Silver Crown Series. Coons Jr. remains competitive to this day and there is little doubt he will eventually find a home in several racing Halls of Fame.
Looking back on his formative years, Jerry Coons Jr. isn’t sure his early experience was different than that of other aspiring racers.
“I don’t know what it would have been like if my dad hadn’t raced,” he said. “When you were growing up like I did you were around a lot of people who had parents that had raced. So there was nothing about what he did that stuck out as different.”
One thing Coons Jr. remembers about his early years is that he never felt pressured.
“I never told him to go out and kick people’s butts,” Jerry Coons Sr. said. “I told him if he went out and ran 30 smooth laps he would be in good shape. The idea was to go out and have a little bit of fun. If he made a mistake, we talked about it. Believe me, if he would have said he didn’t want to do it, we would have put the car up for sale.”
There were moments where the conversations may have been terse, and father and son both recall a disappointing race in New Mexico. So often it is clear that children absorb more from their parents than both parties realize, and Coons Jr. was getting some valuable lessons that served him well.
Even before he began shepherding Cale’s racing career, Coons Jr. experienced the world of youth racing in an entirely different capacity. For a time, he oversaw USAC’s quarter-midget operations and was a steady hand.