BATH – Taylor Schmidt has come full circle.

Schmidt grew up in the grandstands, spending most summer Friday nights watching familiar names turn laps at the Brown County Speedway.

Now the Bath man is turning laps of his own and himself becoming a familiar name atop the Midwest Modified division at that same one-third-mile oval.

“(My dad) would get off late on Fridays, and we’d head to the track,” Schmidt said. “We’d usually get there just in time to watch the features.”

Schmidt said his dad would sometimes take him across the way to walk around in the pits afterwards.

And by the time he turned 14, the boy with stars in his eyes had his own seat in a car, racing side-by-side with the top dogs of the track.

“It felt rewarding being able to run against those guys,” Schmidt said. “I was so young and I was watching them just a few years before, and then I was racing side by side with them.”

Young was a bit of an understatement. Schmidt was barely legal to run down the road by the time he put a car together to race at the track.

After a couple years getting his feet wet, Schmidt began racing in two divisions, the Super Stocks and the Modified division. But there was a catch. Schmidt was racing a Midwest Modified – known as a B-mod – against the higher-powered A-mods because Brown County Speedway didn’t host the B-mod division yet.

Schmidt was literally just in it for the experience.

“Just getting seat time,” he said.

Fast forward 10 years, and that experience has paid its dividends in full. Despite taking a few years off from the Midwest Mods, Schmidt returned to the division two or three years ago and won his first track championship last season, claiming the title on the final turn on the final lap of the final race of the season.

“That was really stressful,” he admitted, “but I’m very thankful it was that close. I really, really pushed myself working on the car during the week. That whole week I was completely focused on one thing. … I was losing sleep at night.”

The start of this season hasn’t been so bad either. Schmidt has a pair of feature wins already despite the weather wiping out its share of early races.

“Feeling very confident,” he said. “We struggled with the setup of the car last year and we did a bunch of different stuff (this year).”

Just like those early days in the grandstands, Schmidt said it’s just he and his dad in the pits.

“It’s a good escape for both of us from everything going on in the world and at work,” he said. “We work together doing construction, so we’re side by side all day long, but at the track, it’s a totally different scene.” 

And if all that work putting a car together inspires another young fan in the stands to find seat in a car of his own? Well, that’d be alright with Schmidt.

“That’d be awesome to inspire someone who was a mini-me up in the stands,” he said.

Just another turn of the circle.