David Cardey comes to the traditional 410 sprints from a successful four-year run in the California Lightning Sprints. This year, he plans to campaign for Rookie honors with the USAC/CRA Sprint Series.

Cardey is a homegrown talent, born and raised in Riverside. Playing soccer from five to fifteen, David was the victim of a drive-by shooting in his sophomore year of high school, being struck in the spine and leaving Cardey paralyzed from the waist down. After a couple of weeks, David regained feeling and use of one leg and eventually, the other leg returned to normal. While still experiencing occasional weakness, Cardey is able to function without limits.

The Cardey family has a vacation home at the Colorado River, so David grew up riding jet-skis on the river and dirt bikes in the adjacent open land. The Cardeys have always been interested in auto racing, so for Christmas 1999, David’s mother purchased a Lightning Sprint as a joint present for David and his Dad, Jim. David raced in 2000 and managed to destroy the car as his learning curve was quite steep. Now the family was hooked and a brand new car was purchased. With all the tough lessons behind them, racing became easier and the Cardey team finished third in points for 2001, second in 2002 and claimed the championship in 2003. Highlight of the year was sweeping all the races at Perris.

David now felt ready to move up in competition and explored several different avenues. One of his adventures was hooking up with former stock car pilots, John Krebs and Jack Sellers to run a NASCAR Grand National West car. After receiving some driving lessons from Wally Pankratz at Orange Show Speedway, Cardey entered his first race at Mesa-Marin Raceway in Bakersfield, finishing eleventh for his initial outing.

Another option was a USAC Pavement sprinter provided by Jim Giardina (Tooth Doc), which allowed Cardey to log extensive practice laps at Irwindale Speedway. Since Giardina also had a couple of dirt sprinters, they decided to pursue the Rookie title for 2004 with the USAC/CRA Sprint series, which has Perris Auto Speedway as its home track. With David’s past success, it was felt he could make the transition to the more powerful car easier.

During the week, Cardey serves as the President of Empire Plumbing Company, which specializes in apartment maintenance, in addition to some work with new housing tracts. Twenty-eight year old David has been married to his wife, Danita for six years. Away from work and racing, the Cardeys still spend time at the river house. David likes to get away and see new places, so travel to new racetracks is a plus.

Empire Plumbing and D&H Racing Products sponsor the Giardina TCR chassis. The crew consists of Jim Giardina, Jim Cardey (Dad), Lonnie Clabaugh, Joel Johnson, Terry Herman and Rex. Mel Murphy’s former crew of Lonnie, Bruce, Don and Mel has provided a lot of input on chassis setups for this new team.

David names his racing heroes as Jeff Gordon and Cory Kruseman. After attending Cory’s driving school, David says that his accessibility to Kruseman is so helpful. Cardey acknowledges the efforts of Jim Giardina, his Dad and Wally Pankratz. Favorite tracks are of course, Perris, Bakersfield and now with the eye opener a few weeks ago, the big, fast Manzanita oval.

Stop by the #59 car after the races and welcome this impressive new driver to the sprints.