The celebration of Father’s Day is observed all over the world, and in the United States, is marked on the third Sunday of every June.
There are more than 70 million fathers in the U.S., and while experts estimate that Americans will spend more than $1 billion this year on gifts, the fathers we talk to say it’s not the things that they remember, but the bonding experiences.
The Masson family has an extra reason to celebrate in 2018. Dr. Robert Masson, Growing Bolder’s medical director and the founder of the Masson Spine Institute, will once again be racing with his son Kyle in the IMSA Prototype Challenge (MPC class), sharing the No. 11 Masson Spine Institute Elan DP02 car.
Their first race together will be on July 8, in Toronto, and the two will actually switch out during the race. Kyle, who will continue to race in the WeatherTech Championship, returns to the Challenge, in the class he dominated in 2017. Dr. Masson now has an even better shot at winning the championship.
Dr. Masson has already made it to the podium twice this season, including a win in Daytona, and leads the MPC class at the midway point of the season.
Until now, Kyle has been able to instruct and coach his father using a simulator, but will now be at the track and says that he feels as if he will be “racing with his championship on the line instead of mine.”
“I want to show my dad that he can have the confidence to go out and get the speed and push himself and his comfort levels,” says Kyle. “Ultimately, he knows the speed is there but just needs a little bit of a push to go get it and I’m going to try and give him that push.”
“When I started racing, I realized a dream I had buried so deep that I didn’t even remember wanting to do it when I was a 7-year-old who woke up at 5:30 a.m. to watch Speedracer every morning,” says Dr. Masson.
“When Kyle said he wanted to do it, I did it at first to chaperone him and then after a while, it hit me that I had somehow found a way to resurrect that childhood dream, and I loved it as much as I thought I would. It’s never too late.”
You can read more about the latest stage of the Masson family racing journey here.
Plus, you can watch more from the Masson racing adventures in these Growing Bolder exclusives:
