The focus, determination and attention to detail are all items which Carville learned in his years racing at a high level that he’s found useful in his daily work with the IHRA. His racing background, however, isn’t going in a straight line. He was a champion road racer, who competed both in North America and in Europe, and he raced dirt modifieds on the oval tracks of the Northeast. An upstate New York native, Carville started racing go-karts at age 12. Five years later, he was designing and building his own karts. He was the 1980 World Karting Association National Champion in the B-Open Division. “We were doing enduro racing in the laydown carts,” he said. “We ran all over the East Coast and at all kinds of historic places like Daytona, Charlotte, Phoenix, Riverside, Calif., and Watkins Glen.” Through karting, he became friends with the Andretti family and he attended open-wheel racing school near the same time as Michael and Jeff Andretti, and raced against them. He then tried his hand at dirt racing, going against folks like Brett Hearn, Jimmy Horton and Lou Blaney, grandfather of current NASCAR star Ryan Blaney, at tracks like Lebanon Valley and the old Syracuse mile. It was a handful trying to control the car with a big-block 750-horsepower Chevy motor on a half-mile dirt oval. Still, he was leading the 1984 DIRT rookie of the year points in the fall when he had an opportunity to live out a road racing dream and go to England. “I was able to get a factory ride with a company named Anglia Cars to race in Britain in 1985,” he recalled. “It was a new car designed for the series, but there were some issues and we didn’t have a huge budget to work with. We were competitive, but never at the front of the grid.” Still, he showed promise and switched to the Penistone team, which was based out of the Formula One track Carville Brings Long History of Racing to Current Role Bobby Carville uses the same tools that made him a champion driver in his role as the membership coordinator for the International Hot Rod Association (IHRA). Carville Brings Long History of Racing to Current Role 8