At the P1 Kart Circuit about 20 miles south of Tucson, Ariz., the desert air is filled with the whine of racing-grade go-karts tearing around a serpentine track at 65 miles per hour. These aren?t Disney Land fun rides. Beyond the boundary fence, Rob Ashley tinkers with his own racing kart, which was damaged when a recent cold snap cracked his water-cooled, single-cylinder, 125 cc engine.
Ashley, 49 and until recently the CEO of AmpliMed, a privately-owned pharmaceutical company focusing on cancer compounds, has always been somewhat of a velocity junkie. He raced go-karts in his native England as a teenager and has always been drawn, in one way or another, to the track. ?I?ve been into racing since I was knee-high to a grasshopper,? he says, southwestern lingo mixing with a British accent.
As he taps the welded engine into place on his kart and torques the mounting bolts ...
