In January 2019, Mihocko met Zach Parker, who is racer Bill Rose’s nephew. By May, Mihocko was living in Parker’s Plainfield, Ind., home, racing locally and working alongside former sprint car standout Jon Stanbrough. In time, he picked up evening work at DRC Chassis, which evolved into a full-time position.
Change is difficult and the idea of picking up stakes and traveling halfway across country is daunting. Mihocko never thought twice about his decision.
“I didn’t think, ‘What if I fail?’” he said. “I made up my mind I either needed to do it or start being an adult and focus on making real money and not doing race car stuff. I had just turned 21 and I was thinking about that. I was at that turning point in my life where I had to take racing seriously or just turn it into a hobby and make life my real focus.”
Mihocko came to Indiana with a truck, a small trailer and his race car. Luckily, his father let him take one of his engines as well. He largely ran his own car for two years and in his words, “didn’t get much traction in terms of getting rides.”
He deemed his first full year a real struggle.
“Part of it was I didn’t have the right equipment,” he said. “Everything was sound mechanically, but I didn’t make the right choices on some products I brought back here. I became friends with Robert Brown, who is a crew chief and he pointed me in the right direction in terms of what I needed in equipment. I got that dialed in during the 2020 season and started showing people that I didn’t come back here just to miss shows.”
The other issue he faced was getting familiar with new tracks.
“Coming from the desert, you don’t get those monster curbs you get out here,” he said with a laugh, “but once I figured that out, I got to where I was calm and comfortable in the car, so it started to click.”
One of Mihocko’s goals was to attract the attention of a car owner who was willing to give him a chance. The late Buddy Cunningham was one of the first to do so. Cunningham had progressed from modifieds to sprint cars and his son, Josh, was the perennial Paragon Speedway champion. The offer came to compete at Paragon with the sprint cars sharing the bill with USAC midgets. It was a tough night to make a debut.
“I did not perform like I needed to,” Mihocko said. “It was USAC Midget Week and I am in a heat race with C.J. Leary, Jake Swanson and like two or three strong local guys. It was like how in the hell am I going to get out of this heat race? I don’t want to end up in the B main the first time I drove for someone.”
What followed was nearly predictable, as Mihocko slid off the track and into a tire barrier. He calls the trip back to the pits, “the longest tow-truck ride of my life.”
Mihocko licked his wounds and kept finetuning his skills. He began running up front regularly and victories came at Bloomington and Lincoln Park Speedways. It was after a Bloomington victory that Mihocko caught the eye of car owner Jamie Paul.
It wasn’t necessarily a good thing, but it’s a situation Paul laughs about now.
“I really don’t pay attention to all the young guys,” he said. “I couldn’t tell you half the guys in the pits most of the time. We were at Putnamville (Lincoln Park Speedway) and Shane Cockrum was driving my car. Shane was on the pole and Tye was starting third. Going into the first turn on the first lap, Tye drilled my car from behind and took us out. We ended up in the infield and he spun, too. I said, ‘Who is that in the 5 car?’ Someone said, ‘That Mihocko kid that won at Bloomington last night.’ I said, ‘OK, he will never drive my car.’”
About a month later, Cockrum and Mihocko squared off again at Lincoln Park. Paul watched as his driver started 10th and headed to the front.
“When it got to five or six laps to go, I saw he had only one more car to pass and it was that Mihocko kid,” Paul explained. “Shane couldn’t get around him. I thought right then that I better start watching this kid because he just beat us.”