Ride of a Lifetime

A clear August sky stretched out its sheet of azure over the Iowa Speedway on Wednesday afternoon. The stands sat empty. No RVs lined up in the infield. No fans wore T-shirts with their favorite driver’s name emblazoned across their chests.

Wednesday was for Caleb Hammond, the 11-year-old from Oskaloosa, whose family decided earlier this summer to end his battle with B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia.

Caleb adores cars, racing and the adrenaline-induced thrill of speed. After deciding to withdraw from treatment, Caleb asked for racing stickers to decorate his casket. The request went viral, and Caleb estimates that thousands of stickers have flooded into his family’s mailbox since.

More than a thousand miles from Oskaloosa, a clip from WSVN 7 Fort Lauderdale, Fla., popped up on Pilar Barrera’s Facebook feed. She clicked on it and learned about Caleb’s request for the first time.

“My heart just dropped,” she said.

Barerra, the daughter of a professional South American race car driver, is a bundle of energy. She has a background as a photographer and researches marine environmental issues, but she has also works on projects for luxury car dealerships in South Florida. She bounces through each piece of her professional life with every strand of her sleek dark hair in place and makeup firmly set on high cheekbones that frame a winning smile. When Barerra learned about Caleb’s situation, she couldn’t sit still. She immediately shared WSVN 7’s article to people she knew in the racing industry, including Ferrari-Maserati of Fort Lauderdale.

Garrett Hayim, the owner of the Florida dealership, jumped at the opportunity to do something for Caleb. Hayim’s own father has experienced nearly fatal brushes with cancer, and he donates a percentage of vehicle sales to cancer research projects. When Hayim met with Barerra, the two started strategizing about how to send one of his aerodynamic, sponsor-covered Ferarris from one of Hayim’s teams to Iowa.

“After speaking with his parents, they had expressed to me that Caleb had always wanted to go to South Florida,” Barerra said. “Right now, we don’t know what conditions are, if he could fly out or not. So we figured, ‘Let’s bring a piece of South Florida to him here in Iowa.’”

On Aug. 22, Barerra made a call to Iowa Speedway.

“We thought it was an outstanding opportunity to put our venue to use for such a great cause,” said David Hyatt, president of the Iowa Speedway.

The “fastest short track on the planet” has its own charitable arm, Iowa Speedway Cares, and has hosted charitable events before, but coordinating with Ferrari Challenge was a new experience.

“We’re happy that there’s another opportunity for someone who wants to come out and get some time on the track. We’re happy that we have the environment to do that, and we’re in the right place to do it for this time,” Hyatt said.

Exactly a week after Barerra placed the call, a highlighter-yellow trailer emblazoned with Ferarri’s prancing black horse lumbered up Rusty Wallace Drive, and a chiseled 48 Challenge GT Ferrari in the care of driver Jody Coenen glided off of it.

That afternoon, Coenen put the machine through its paces around the track at 202 miles per hour with Caleb in the passenger’s seat. They laid some rubber on the asphalt as they swung the car through celebratory burnout turns. Nine family members cheered and snapped photographs of the blur that circled around them.

“When we were doing the doughnuts, it felt like a tornado,” Caleb said after he climbed out of the car.

The smell of burning tires lingered in the hot, still air that hung over the track. Although he wore a tired, serious expression, a wide grin spread over his face.

Now Caleb knows how his favorite driver, Kyle Larson, feels when he sails around these tracks in the NASCAR Xfinity series. For an afternoon, Caleb experienced the same type of fearlessness he said he admires in Larson.

Caleb, however, lives his days in a different type of fearlessness. He graciously tolerates camera crews and reporters peppering him with questions, and he accepts these gifts with a sobering dignity.

“I’m feeling really excited, and I’m doing good,” he said when a local TV station asked him how he had been getting along recently. “That’s all I have to say about that,” he added in Forrest-Gump fashion, wise beyond his eleven years.

Contact Phoebe Marie Brannock at 641-792-3121 ext. 6547 or at pbrannock@newtondailynews.com