Building the Driveway Series Bike Race Upended My Life

(Photo: Brandon McKinney)

Confessions of a Bicycle Race Promoter

Published: 8 hours ago

For 14 years Andrew Willis oversaw Austin’s Driveway Series, a weekly criterium race for amateur cyclists. The stress, financial pressure, and constant criticism upended his life.

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The Friday morning after Kevin Underhill crashed, I returned to the Driveway auto racetrack around 7 A.M. The track’s owner, Bill Dollahite, greeted me. How was I doing, he asked.

I had already told Bill that we’d had to transport Underhill to the hospital the previous night. It was important for the venue owner to know that there had been a serious crash, because he might need to speak with local media outlets about the incident. But Bill had already seen the blood on the race course. A car club would be using the track at 9 A.M., Bill reminded me. We needed to have the venue cleaned up and prepared for their arrival.

It was August 14, 2009, near the end of my first full eight-month season as the promoter and race director of the Driveway Series, a Thursday night road bike race at the far end of east Austin. I dumped PA cables, extension cords, and other equipment out of five-gallon buckets I’d been using as storage. I found a scrub brush and some Dawn dish soap, and went down to the tree-lined section of the track. I carried one bucket of clean water, one of soapy water.

I scrubbed the track for the next hour and a half, trying to get the blood stain out. I understood that the group of people Bill was hosting were paying for a premium experience. One of the members in the car club was a doctor from Austin’s Brackenridge Hospital, where we’d transported Underhill the previous evening. The doctor had finished a long overnight shift. We began to talk.

“Is Kevin going to be okay?” I asked. Because of medical privacy rules, the doctor couldn’t say much. He just told me, “I know you probably want to go home, but you should really go back to the hospital.”

Andrew Willis was owner and director of The Driveway Series for more than a decade (Photo: Brandon McKinney)

During the 14 years that I owned the Driveway Series—working as the event’s “promoter,” from 2009 to 2022—the Series grew from a low-key weeknight gathering into one of the biggest collection of bike races in the country, sponsored by global sports and fitness brands like Red Bull and Life Time. Today, when I introduce myself to other promoters, they’ll often say something like, “Driveway Series Andrew? We should talk.” But, despite my best efforts to look back positively on my time operating the Series, I retain deeply conflicted feelings about the event.

For everything that I can and should be proud of—the vibrant community that grew around the Series and its hard-earned financial success—there’s other stuff that makes me sour and sad. Constantly catering to obsessive participants pushed me into dark and dangerously unhealthy spaces. At the same time, looking back, I wonder if I could have done more to make our little sport of bike racing safer and more welcoming to everyone.

Across the country, I know event promoters who also put on running, biking, and adventure races, that deal with these same struggles. We often joke, man, if people only knew the shit we deal with.

I got into promoting through a longtime Texas bike racer named Barry Lee. In 2006, he was the first person to lease track time and run bike races at the Driveway, a property that borders the Colorado River and is ringed by open space and forest. (The track’s name came from the owner, Bill, who once told a City inspector he was simply building a circular “driveway” to an old house on the property, not a racetrack.) Barry is a natural community builder, and sought out venues within riding distance from downtown. He liked to bring a keg of beer to the weekly races, which sometimes led to a raucous afterparty near the registration tent.

In my teens and twenties, I was an avid racer, and I competed in Europe and Latin America. But recently married with a family soon on the way, I was content to simply socialize and man the trackside grill at Barry’s races. Flipping hot dogs and burgers, I’d listen to the middle-aged amateurs swapping stories about the big events they’d just attended. They relished the professional race atmosphere, with course fencing and banners, and an announcer that gave the play-by-play to big crowds gathered around the finish line.

One night, I told Barry, “What if we made the Driveway races feel just like a national-level event? Bring that same pro-race experience here, every Thursday night.” But Barry didn’t seem to share my vision. Then, in 2008, he moved to Colorado.

Not long after Barry moved, I met with Bill about continuing the races at the Driveway. Bill needed to pay out his investors in the track, and he wanted a partner confident they could grow the event year-over-year. I showed up to our meeting with my six-month old baby girl, Maple, taking a nap on my chest. As I launched into my spiel, I could see Bill’s face light up. We signed a ten-year lease, putting the Driveway’s weekly bike races under my control.

Racers ascend the corkscrew turn at The Driveway racetrack (Photo: Brandon McKinney)

The first race of the 2009 season took place on March 12, the Thursday after daylight savings. My wife, Holly, and I had formed an LLC, offered pre-registration online, and bumped the entry fee to $20. At the time, that level of organization and cost were uncommon for a weeknight criterium—a short race that occurs on a closed circuit.

Watching the University of Texas Longhorns play football in the fall, I noticed there was a Home Depot end-zone camera and a Ryobi tools statistics update. It clicked: everything’s for sale. I thought I could get $50,000, maybe even six figures, if I offered a dozen-plus $500 sponsorship opportunities spread out over 30 or more races. When I told people my plan, some of them scoffed, “Dude, it’s just a weeknight crit!”

The races started at 5 P.M. Me, my brother Bob, and a friend planned to get there at 1 P.M. to set up. Holly, who’s an engineer, took off work early to run registration. Then Bill called. He told us a Department of Defense event at the Driveway meant we couldn’t start setting up until 4 P.M. When Bill opened the gates, we rushed onto the track. I was putting up signs and erecting tents and tables as people began arriving for the race.

Then I felt the wind pick up. I looked into the blue spring sky and noticed dark clouds looming on the horizon. As riders rolled to the line for the evening’s first race, rain came down in bone-chilling sheets. Everything got soaked, including us and all of our equipment. In their rush to leave after racing, participants who’d parked in a dirt lot left mud and grass tracks everywhere.

Bill expected that the facility looked better on Friday morning than before the races started on Thursday afternoon. I stayed out at the track until 3 A.M. with a push broom and shovel scraping mud off the pavement. When I finally got home and sat down at my computer, my inbox burst with people asking for results. I posted the results, then politely responded to each email.

After that first race, I fixated on what lay ahead: I have 32 of these to go this season. I realized my six-figure-revenue vision for the Driveway Series would require an unseen level of professionalism for grassroots-level racing. I wanted everyone in the Austin cycling community to know that you could count on the Driveway.
Rain, heat, sleet, hail, whatever—it was going to be the same product every fucking week.

Riders at the Driveway Series prepare for the start (Photo: Brandon McKinney)

I started playing around with ways to give our volunteers incentives. During the summer, when it’s 100-plus degrees for three straight months, people who helped set up or tear down got a free entry and $100. Over the first three years of the Series, 98 races in total, I paid out more than $113,000 in labor. Holly’s cousin, Raymond, was our most reliable crew member. He didn’t want to race—he just came to work.

I vowed never to start the races later than 5 P.M. and began experimenting with infrastructure that could be erected in an hour or less. If sponsors gave us money to have their banners on the fencing, it needed to be installed before the first race. So I bought a truck and a custom trailer to hold fencing that could be deployed quickly. Holly and her team sat behind laptops and printed out race waivers. I found an inflatable arch for the start/finish line that went up much quicker than metal trusses. At 44-feet-wide, it spanned the width of the track—requiring a custom fabric thickness and stitching to hold the seams. We learned not to buy the cheap, easy-up style tents, and invested in commercial-grade coverings, as well as tables, chairs, and extension cords.

Though Holly and I managed not to incur any debt, every dollar of profit we earned went back into the Series. Over the first three years, between 2009 and 2011, I spent over $60,000 on equipment. The insurance and rental fees for the Driveway cost $143,000.

After poring over registration data from the sport’s governing body, USA Cycling, I realized bike racing’s demographics were skewing over-30 and that Masters and intermediate categories would make up the core of my business. To get those middle-aged and mid-pack athletes excited to come out, I needed buy-in from the local elites. A former pro and Austin-based coach named David Wenger had a devoted following. People jokingly called him and his team “Wenger Nation.” I subsidized entries for David and his team and told them to treat the Driveway Series like a race, not a training ride.

Prior to me taking over, Barry had given free beer to racers. But as parents, Holly and I wanted a more family friendly vibe. We offered a non-competitive kid’s lap with post-race medals. A popsicle vendor sweetened the deal. With the lower category racers hanging out after their own races to watch the pros, along with friends and family, the crowd grew to 800 people or more. With all of the spectators, the City of Austin told me the Series required entertainment zoning, and the Driveway property was zoned for sports and recreation.

The fact that we had a different food truck on-site every week didn’t help, but the City eventually chilled out.

That first year, we generated $27,000 in sponsorship sales. Most of it came from local business owners who also raced—a personal injury lawyer that represents cyclists, a Volkswagen repair specialist, a cosmetic dentist. I reinvested most of the money from those $500 sponsorship checks into banners bearing sponsor logos, social media ads, and a top-of-the-line public announcement system, plus fun stuff like sponsor-branded cowbells and pint glasses.

Years before, I’d taken graduate-level courses in education at Texas State University, and learned that the human brain retains memories when three of the five senses are engaged. Repetition also helps with retention. So I hired an announcer to shout out the sponsors of each race category and every mid-race prime numerous times per night. At various sponsor tents, people could touch, taste and smell product samples. We also positioned the fence banners where the race photographers often set up.

Our sponsors saw a legitimate return on their investment. When a local bar, the SIX Lounge, started booking expensive holiday parties through referrals from the Driveway Series, the owner approached me for more sponsorship options. Soon, national and even international businesses began showing interest in the Driveway Series. Those $500 sponsorship checks became $5,000 and more.

In 2014, Red Bull quietly signed a two-year deal. The company didn’t want its logo on the website or anything—it just wanted cans in hands. Two years later, Monster Energy approached me, “How much to get rid of Red Bull?” the brand manager asked. Red Bull thought I was bluffing, so I signed a two-year deal with Monster. As soon as Red Bull got cut out, their representative came back to me. “We want to bid for two years from now,” he told me.

In 2015, I sold $120,000 in sponsorship cash before the first race of the season. While Holly still worked full-time as an engineer, I’d become a professional event organizer. We were so happy, like we had crossed the line first in a marathon or cracked some code.

I mean, dude, it’s just a weeknight crit.

Racers at the Driveway Series stay to cheer on their friends (Photo: Brandon McKinney)

Kevin Underhill started showing up to watch the races early in the 2009 season. He was a thin guy who wore a weathered cycling hat and round, Coke-bottle glasses held in place with a neoprene strap. He’d been an electrical engineer for National Instruments and managed to retire early, living a frugal life based around travel and adventure. We’d talk weekly, and he told me, “I want to race, but I’m nervous.” I remember encouraging him, “You should only race when you feel ready.”

Underhill had an old steel lugged bicycle. It wasn’t a modern racing bike, but that’s the beauty of the lower category fields, they’re meant to bring in people who aren’t hardcore cyclists. I would let Underhill ride laps before the races started. He asked other racers all about the sport. If you can think of a question about bike racing, he asked it.

Finally, on a warm evening in August, Underhill, who was 40, decided to line up for the Speed Loop—the least-technical of the course designs we can run on the roughly mile and a half-long track. But on that first lap, seemingly fueled by adrenaline, Underhill took off. When he came through the start-finish line to begin his second lap, he was leading the pack.

As he descended a little hill onto the track’s wooded back stretch, Underhill ran out of energy. He got pulled back through the field at 30-plus miles per hour. His nerves must have taken over. Other racers later told me that his front wheel locked up—a sign that he probably grabbed his front brake. Underhill crashed. According to the medical examiner’s report, he incurred blunt force injuries to his head.

Every week, we had two licensed paramedics at the Driveway Series with a mobile evacuation unit—a much more robust medical team than was required by the sport’s governing body, USA Cycling. The officials quickly neutralized the race. The medics rushed down to the backside of the track. Once they reached him, the lead medic radioed me, “Call 911.”

When I made it down to the crash site myself, I saw Underhill sitting straight up, screaming at the top of his lungs. His helmet sat askew, and blood ran from his head. After the ambulance came and took him to the hospital, I asked the medic, “He was conscious, that’s good, right?”

“No man, that’s not a good sign,” the lead medic said. “That’s a brain bleed.”

I spent that night at the hospital with Underhill’s fiancée. Then, in the morning, I returned to the Driveway and cleaned the blood off the track before the car club arrived. When I got back to the hospital, I learned Underhill’s brain bleed wasn’t healing.

Underhill’s fiancée had given me the keys to his car and asked me if I could drive it back from the Driveway to her house. I remember getting in the car and seeing Underhill’s folded jeans sitting there in the passenger seat, his brown leather wallet in the center console. I could smell his cologne. In a little Igloo cooler, he’d packed some post-race drinks. On the car’s dash, he’d put a picture of him and his fiancée hiking in the mountains.

Pulling up to a stoplight on the access road of Interstate-35, I lost it. The light must have gone through a few rotations, but I didn’t move. People drove around me, laying on the horn, yelling, “Fuck you, man,” and I’m just spiraling. On Sunday, August 16th Kevin Underhill passed away.

Kevin Underhill was a regular at the Driveway Series before he decided to race (Photo: Andrew Willis)

Racers speed along the Driveway racetrack (Photo: Brandon McKinney)

With everything shut down, including the Driveway Series, Bill stopped charging me rent. But when the governor of Texas opened the state back up in June, the rent was due again.

I started delivering for DoorDash to cover the monthly payments for the track. At the behest of many of the Driveway Series’ longtime financial supporters, I decided to run a six-race series that same month. Even with all the COVID precautions we took—pre and post-race masks, temperature checks and socially distanced starts—the decision elicited outrage from other Driveway Series participants.

One week after George Floyd, an unarmed Black man, was murdered by police in Minneapolis, a cycling website called the Radavist published an op-ed titled, Bike Racing, White Privilege and the Coronavirus. The article accurately assessed the inequity and structural racism that’s inherent in amateur bike racing, and scrutinized my decision to put on mass-start events as the virus disproportionately ravaged marginalized communities.

With the world seemingly in flames, I began receiving dozens of death threats online. People wrote that they hoped me and my family got COVID and died. My daughter, who was a teenager, saw some of the comments on social media and became upset. Our sponsors got tagged in many of the negative posts and comments, and it wasn’t long before Life Time discontinued its sponsorship. Eventually, Kelley and I decided to end the mini-series early.

It would have been easy for me to get puffed up, roll my eyes, and mutter something about snowflakes. I hadn’t thought too deeply about how my own gender and race potentially affected my life’s trajectory. But, how many sponsor deals had I closed with other white dudes who liked bikes?

Of the roughly 300 starters at the Driveway Series, maybe two or three of the racers were Black. And only one in ten were women. Though I wanted more women racing, I’d prioritized the races with the largest field sizes, which were almost entirely men. Then, a friend made a simple suggestion: I was already ahead financially for the night, why not reinvest in the fields that need growth?

When the Driveway series returned for a full season in 2021, I put the women’s open race at a more accessible start time at the end of the evening, right before the elite men’s race. To make room on the schedule, I took away the stand-alone men’s 40 plus masters race. The women rallied, getting more racers to come participate. An introductory racing program, the Leadout Foundation, organized a women’s specific cycling clinic that focused on riding confidently in a pack. On the evening of the clinic, the Driveway Series had its highest ever number of female starters, 53.

Near the end of the 2021 season, I learned that Bill had sold the racetrack. The City of Austin wanted to turn the entire compound into a public park with the track as the centerpiece, a plan strongly supported by a city-wide referendum. To me, it was another major obstacle in organizing the series for the upcoming year.

I’d also noticed my relationship with the participants changing. Instead of feeling inspired by their enthusiasm and passion for the sport, I began to see entitlement. I knew it was unintentional, but it seemed racers rarely made a distinction between their hobby and my job. So, when a younger racer, Chris Tolley, reached out to me with some questions about promoting events, I suggested we meet up at the track.

During the change in ownership, not much maintenance had occurred at the Driveway. Chris and I walked down the back straightaway, past all the downed branches and the grass growing up through cracks in the pavement. I’d known Chris since he’d started bike racing at the Driveway in 2015. He’d managed his own team, and developed a popular social media persona, tolleyallways, where he posted videos of his BMX tricks, as well as all the entertaining and inane stuff that spun through his vortex.

Coming up the little corkscrew hill, Chris turned to me, “I want to take over the Driveway Series. I want to buy you out.” I raised an eyebrow, “Don’t you want to dig into the finances?”

“Who’s going to clean all this up?” I asked.

“I will,” Chris said. “I’ll make it work. It will be my problem, not yours.”

These days, Chris will sometimes call me sounding pretty defeated. In a weird way, it gives me hope for the Driveway Series. In his voice, I can hear how much he cares. I also know that some of the highs and lows he’s faced in his first seasons running the series—the hottest summer on record, for example—are just the beginning.

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Lead Photo: Brandon McKinney

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Confessions of a Bicycle Race Promoter

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