Jay grad made racing safer

Alan Lewis was convinced he could make auto racing safer.
Now the seat patented by the 1984 Jay County High School graduate and former president of Createc is the standard for Indy Racing League drivers.
“I make foam … I know the properties,” said Lewis, of how and why he became involved with creating seats for one of the world’s premier racing series.
“And I like to race cars myself. I’ve wrecked, and I know how much it hurts. As soon as I saw (how they were made), it just kind of popped in my mind. That was it. It took like two seconds. It took longer to execute it, but I had the idea, and the idea didn’t change drastically at all,” he said.
Lewis became involved in racing almost by chance.
The Portland native had lived in Chicago, where he worked for a toy company after graduating from Miami University (Ohio). While in Chicago, a favorite activity was racing boats on Lake Michigan with his friend Deane Tank.
Since there’s not much wide-open water around Indianapolis, racing boats was out of the question when Lewis moved back to his home state to work for Createc, the family business, in 1995.
But Tank suggested they get into racing cars
Lewis agreed, went to a driving school, and entered his first race in 1995. That first race ended in a crash.
But he bought the car and continued to drive, becoming a part of the racing community along the way.
“There’s tons of racing around here, so you kind of get to know people,” said Lewis, who started in information technology at Createc and later become operations manager, vice president of operations and then president in 2001. “I met a guy who was making race seats.”
From working at Createc, which specializes in the operations and support processes used to custom mold foam products, Lewis knew plenty about the materials involved.
Once he saw the process, he thought he could create a safer racing seat by using polypropylene rather than polystyrene, noting that the former is a “much better energy absorber” than the latter.
So he and friends Glen Macdonald and Cameron Cobb formed a company to make the idea a reality and used Createc resources to design the seat and create the prototype.
But when they had their new product, no one was interested in using it.
“It’s one of those things where everyone is skeptical as to what you’re doing,” said Lewis. “But once one person likes it, everyone wants it.”
So they ended up giving a seat to an Indy Lights team. And, Lewis said, the first driver to use it was Jason Priestly.
The actor, most famous for his role on Beverly Hills, 90201, was in a serious accident during practice for an Infiniti Pro Series race at Kentucky Speedway in 2002. He hit the wall head-on twice, suffering broken back, a concussion and a variety of facial injuries. But he survived.
“The doctors told him the seat went a long way to absorbing the energy and the shock and helped save his life,” said Lewis. “So after that, everyone wanted to have these seats.”
Since then the company, now called Bald Spot Sports and run by Cameron Cobb and his brother Travis, has become the top provider of seats for the Indy Racing League.
Lewis said about 75 percent of the IRL cars use the seat, each one of which is molded to fit the specific driver.
The company is also a major provider for the National Hot Rod Association.
Sam Schmidt, who competed in the Indianapolis 500 three times before suffering an accident at Walt Disney World Speedway that left him paralyzed from the neck down, said he has no doubt the seat designed by Lewis could have saved him from becoming a quadriplegic.
“Don’t take my word for it,” said Schmidt, who was injured in 2000. “There hasn’t been a … spinal cord injury since.
“They have improved the cars significantly since that time. I think one of the primary improvements has been in the area of seat development, which (Lewis) was obviously intimately involved in.”
Lewis has served on the board of the Sam Schmidt Paralysis Foundation for the past four years.
In addition to his involvement with the creation of the improved seat, Lewis has also helped several drivers get their careers started. J.R. Hilldebrand, who finished second to Dan Wheldon at the Indy 500 in 2011, stayed with his family for several years while he was getting his career started.
He’s also helped drivers Wade Cunningham, who was sponsored by Portland-based eCat for the Indy 500 in May, and James Winslow.
“I love racing,” said Lewis. “That’s my No. 1 reason. But I’ve also been given a number of opportunities throughout my life. I figured, all I needed was a good opportunity. … I just kind of wanted to return the favor by helping these kids get their opportunity.”
Lewis sold Createc in Dec. of 2010 and made an agreement with his wife, Charlotte, that he would take a year off of work.
Since that year ended — and maybe even before — Lewis admits, he has begun a couple of new projects. He is working on developing electronic bicycles along with eCat partners Dave and Tim Poole, both of Portland, and he said he has one other project he’s working on that he won’t be ready to talk about until the summer.
But, he said, it’s another safety product that is “even cooler” than the racing seat.
”I think on New Year’s Eve I was re-engaged,” said Lewis of his return to work, “maybe even a little bit earlier.
“Sometimes I miss my job at Createc,” he added. “I miss the people. … I had a lot of fun there, but I don’t miss all the stresses.”[[In-content Ad]]