Racing up the charts

BELLEVUE — He might not win every race but, with a popular online presence, he's positioned himself on the fast track to a viral victory. Dirt late model racer Ryan Missler documents his journey from behind the scenes to race day on his YouTube channel with his family by his side. He started the channel, Ryan Missler Racing, in 2017 and has almost 10,000 subscribers and averages several thousand views on his videos. "'It's another full-time job,' is how I describe it," Missler said. "Racing starts around here in March, and you can race into October every weekend. If you won once before, you want to win all the time." Missler has been involved in racing since 2001 when he started racing go-karts and filming the races for keepsakes. Eventually, he moved on to bigger cars, dirt late models, in 2004. Dirt late models are raced on a dirt track, use a V8 engine and are specifically built for racing. "I mostly race around Ohio or neighboring states," Missler said. "When I was a kid, I would go to our local track in Attica with my dad. That's what I lived for when I was a kid, to go there every week." After racing dirt late models for over 10 years, Missler walked away from racing in 2016. "I hadn't won a race in a while, and it was feeling more like a job working on race cars. It wasn't fun anymore," he said. "We stopped for almost a whole year. (But then) a buddy of mine put together a car and said he had it ready and asked if I would race it." In winter 2017, his son's friend, Christian Booze, was in high school and working on different filming projects. Missler asked if he would want to "follow me around with a video camera." "I always thought it would be cool to get more behind the scenes from known race car drivers because nobody was really doing that," he said. Booze has edited Missler's videos ever since. "Having the YouTube channel has been a journey. It's a labor of love. It is a ton of work, but it's been so fun to see his vision becoming reality over the years," Missler's wife Amber said. "It's great to go to different race tracks and have people come up and tell us they watch every video and have the support from people all over the place." Amber said the channel wouldn't be possible without Booze, who edits and arranges footage, or the support from sponsors and fans. "I knew I wanted to show people what we were doing, but I didn't know how to talk to the camera at first," he said. "It was a lot of self-critiquing. We had the same subscribers for years, but with consistently putting out videos, it started to take off." Racing on dirt tracks is a lot more than showing up, Missler said. Every Sunday, the race car gets a deep clean. He said they go through at least one tire per race. "Everything's muddy and dirty and there's sand and grit and it gets into everything. It's really abusive on your equipment so you have to make sure nothing is bent. After you wash something, you need to make sure everything is moving properly," Missler said. "During the week, you're communicating with all your sponsors because they like to be involved. It's a lot more than just owning your own car, it's a lot of time." Ryan Missler Racing is a family affair. Amber does the majority of filming for the channel. "Luckily, my wife loves racing. The wives don't get as much recognition in racing as they deserve," Missler said. "Amber does our merchandise sales and shipping and website and social media updates. She homeschools our kids." Racing has always been a part of the Misslers' life, Amber said, and that's it's their way of life. "Our kids have grown up going to the race track every weekend. It's something we look forward to," she said. "The kids have their racing friends that they play with. My parents are with us every race." Their three children, Lilian, Scarlet and Oliver, are featured in many of the videos. "It's nice to have my kids and my wife involved," Missler said, "It's important because I used to have to go to the race shop that wasn't on my property and I was gone most nights." Amber said she loves to see her husband succeed and do something that makes him happy. "We have become such great friends with other racers, too, and being able to share the wins with our race family is great," Amber said. "Filming has been fun because we can look back on race nights. It also lets fans see the hard work and sacrifice that goes into having a race team." Amber said the couple always has fun. "It's awesome to see him grow as a driver and become successful through all his hard work," she said. "Some years the struggles outweigh the successes and vice versa but overall, we always have fun." Now Missler's car is at home and all of his work is done from his garage. "I own a machine shop here in Bellevue. I work more hours than most and then I come home and work on a race car at night," he said. "If the family wasn't included, I wouldn't see them as much. I'm proud of being able to win races and not have the most expensive everything out there." Missler said one of the biggest things he had to do was get over his fear of what others thought about him. "I like to encourage other racers to put themselves out there," he said. "So many people say they've thought about making videos, I would just encourage them to give it a try."