Local racing: Ohio return special for Centerville native Sellers

For Bryan Sellers, the reasons to be happy about returning to Ohio are as numerous as the Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course has turns.

For starters, the Centerville native will have strong family support this weekend at the 13-turn, 2.258-mile road course about 90 minutes north of Columbus.

Among those cheering Sellers are his wife and racing TV personality, Jamie (Howe) Sellers, who can’t always attend his races. Sellers’ 2 ½-year-old son and 6-month-old daughter will be there. His brother Robert will drive up from Centerville. Sellers’ parents, Doug and Barb, will make the trip from Waynesville, excited to see the grandkids as much as Sellers.

The race in his home state also brings a large group of friends to Mid-Ohio. It’s a chance for Sellers to catch up with friends who helped with his racing career all the way down to his early karting days.

And, just 20 minutes up the road, there’s a Penn Station East Coast Subs restaurant. His favorite sub shop, one he doesn’t get to as often outside of Ohio, would serve as a suitable place for a celebratory dinner should he score a podium finish in the Pirelli World Challenge (PWC) GT races.

Sellers enters the weekend ranked sixth in the GT Sprint points chase after five of nine rounds. He’s in his first season driving the No. 6 McLaren 650S for K-PAX Racing, a program that has 103 podium finishes, 41 victories and four driver championships since joining the PWC in 2007. Last year K-PAX claimed the PWC team, driver and manufacturer championships.

Sellers has one podium finish in the GT Sprint class and sits four points out of third place.

“We’ve shown some really good moments, but by and large it needs to be better than what it’s shown so far,” Sellers said. “My focus is to forget about what’s happened so far and make it as good as we can the rest of the season.”

That’s where Mid-Ohio comes in. The technical track demands patience with turns like the Keyhole and Carousel. Sellers won at Mid-Ohio back in 2011 driving a Porsche for Team Falken tire with then-teammate Wolf Henzler.

“Mid-Oho is near and dear to my heart,” said Sellers, who last raced there in 2013. “I’d love nothing more than to win for K-PAX at Mid-Ohio.”

Sellers races twice this weekend with the Pirelli World Challenge, which runs at Mid-Ohio in support of the IndyCar Series. The first PWC race is 4:45 p.m. to 5:55 p.m. on Saturday. The second race is from noon to 1:05 p.m. Sunday.

Sellers, 34, still has miles to go in his racing career. But as he gets older he realizes how lucky he’s been to drive high-performance sports cars like a McLaren and Porsche. He also currently drives a Lamborghini Huracan GT3 for Paul Miller Racing in the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship.

“Every now and then you take a step back and think this is pretty amazing,” he said. “For me this is a dream. It’s what I wanted to do since I was 9. People would do anything to do their dream job. But at the end of the day it’s still a job. It’s stressful, there’s a lot of pressure and things that go with it. It’s nice to have those moments when you can love doing it.

“Earlier in my career it didn’t mean as much. The further I get the more it means..”

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