About Us

IN THE BEGINNING

Raceworks began with the racing efforts of the Lockwood Brothers, Sam & Grant. Grant was a high school student with 7 years' karting experience, while Sam was finishing college and had a lead foot and most of a business degree. The family had relocated in the Georgia a few years prior.

After checking out the local karting scene, the brothers found circle track racing in "real" race cars more to their liking. They were able to acquire two Front-Wheel Drive mini-stock cars and began their racing partnership in 1994 at Lanier National Speedway. The two achieved several top-3 finishes and managed to finish 6th and 8th in points in their inaugural season.

During this time Raceworks provided metal fabrication services, and also began providing custom signs & decals for a variety of customers.

By 1996, Raceworks had transitioned to Legends cars, and ran both the Georgia regional series and in the Summer Shootout at Charlotte Motor Speedway.

SEDAN RACING

Starting in 1995, Raceworks began its involvement in sports car racing with a transition to running Volkswagens in SCCA's Improved Touring class. This involvement would continue for nearly a decade and the team would rack up a variety of successes in the ITB & ITC classes in both sprint and endurance format racing.

On the business side, Raceworks branched out into selling performance and safety products for racers, and was one of the first companies in the industry to have an online sales presence.

Starting in 1997, the team began looking for more professional venues to participate in, eventually building a Honda Civic Del Sol for the Speedvision Cup endurance series in 1998. The program was fairly successful, and the car showed some promise (qualifying 2nd in its first pro event), but the series was canceled at the end of the season.

For the 1999 season, Raceworks acquired a car for the World Challenge Series, a Honda Prelude for the Touring Car class. The series would present a variety of challenges for the grassroots racing team: the cars were at a higher prep level than they were used to, at the time it enjoyed massive popularity (40 car fields were the norm), the rules changed significantly every year, and they were running on about 1/10 the budget of the factory-backed front-running teams.

All that being said, in the three years Raceworks ran the Prelude program, they managed to get a top-10 finish every year. In 2002, Raceworks built a brand new car, a Civic hatchback. The car was in every way better than the old Prelude, but between rules creep and the Touring Car races turning into crash-fests this car wasn't nearly as successful as its predecessor.

In 2003, the team transitioned to the East Cost Honda Challenge. The tool of choice was the Del Sol built in 1998 for endurance racing, and the team began developing the car for the H1 class, as well as select enduros in both NASA and the SCCA. Over the next four years this car would go on to get several wins, establish multiple track records, and place well in long-distance races with a best finish of 3rd in the Charge of the Headlight Bridage 13-hour race at Virginia International Raceway in 2006.

During the "Sedan Years" Raceworks also became one of the premiere tuner shops in North Georgia, specializing in Honda and Volkswagen performance modifications.

OPEN WHEEL RACING

In late 2002, Raceworks acquired its first purpose-built race car, a 1999 Formula Mazda. It would be with these cars that the team would really hit its stride, running the program in parrallel with the Honda Challenge series.

By 2005, Raceworks had won its first championship: the South Atlantic Road Racing Championship with driver Sam Lockwood. The next two years saw even greater success with the team winning a national championship in 2006 and the coveted SCCA Triple Crown in 2007. The oughties would see Raceworks becoming one of THE teams to run with in Formula Mazda, and the team would often be bringing or servicing 3-4 cars per event.

In 2011 Raceworks branched out into Formula F, with a Honda-powered Piper chassis. Again the team would achieve success, winning the first professional race for a Honda powered F1600 car and finishing 3rd in the championship.