DeRouen working dream job with KohR Motorsports

Published 6:30 am Sunday, January 3, 2021

Whitney DeRouen knew from an early age what he wanted to do with his life.

His mom, Tammy DeRouen, tells the story that when Whitney was 6 years old he took apart the toaster and put it back together.

It was the first of many forays into the world of mechanics and how things work that would eventually lead him to where he is now, working on an motorsports team testing, prepping and maybe one day racing sports cars.

“I’m working my dream job,” DeRouen said. “It really doesn’t get any better than what I’m doing now.”

Stephen Whitney DeRouen, a 2012 New IberiaSenior High graduate and a 2019 Louisiana-Lafayette graduate, works for KohR Motorsports out of Detroit, where he does a little of everything, mostly working on the car the team sponsors in International Motor Sports Association GT Series.

“I do everything from mechanic work to engineering, to fabrication to welding,” DeRouen said. “We’re also a Ford Performance parts dealer so I do sales so when a customer calls me and wants a part, I have to look up the rules of that series and I pitch them that this is what we can do for you up to a certain point because if you go past that you move up in series and it becomes a lot harder.

“Basically, designing race cars is another part of my job. I also drive across the country in a motor home with a car stacker on the back.”

DeRouen and the KohR racing team compete in the IMSA Michelin Pilot Challenge, which is GT4 specifications.

“GT4 is a series where each manufacturer comes to the sanctioning body and says we want to race,” DeRouen said. “They have to agree to certain specifications. You have to have these shocks, this amount of horsepower, this amount of weight and they go through the design process with the sanctioning body where they come up with the baseline for a car.

“They do that do make the entire field level. That way a Ford Mustang and a Chevy Camaro can race against a McLaren or a Mercedes GTR. There is a wide range of cars that race in this series.”

According to DeRouen, theoretically, you could pick a car off the car lot and go race but he said that the sanctioning body requires you to buy the car from the manufacturer due to the safety factors of the cars.

“The manufacturers put a lot of safety factors in the cars and it prevents you from putting some type of performance edge in the cars that would give your team an advantage,” DeRouen said. “There are some advantages to the cars but for the most part the series tries to make it about driver skill.”

Last season, DeRouen and KohR Motorsports won the series with their car, an Aston-Martin.

“It’s funny, because the last race of the season was actually two races due to COVID,” DeRouen said. “After the first race, the series determined that we were too strong in the straights and they made us use a different engine tuning and lowered our turbo pressure, which brought us down in straight line speed.

“They can also add weight to the car, adjust your performance in curves and also take away fuel from you if they feel that your car is too fuel efficient just to make the cars as even as possible.”

How DeRouen got to this point in his life is another story in itself.

While at UL, he was a founding member of Ragin’ Cajun Racing.

“A couple of friends and I starting this group, now known as SAE, and we called ourselves Ragin’ Cajun Racing,” DeRouen said. “Some people in Lafayette may have seen us in car shows. It was a design competition where you design, build and race this formula style car that pretty much looks like an Indy car.”

DeRouen also added that the team was limited to certain safety regulations but for the most part it was about raising money, designing and proving race cars.

“The way I got my job was that through the SAE program, we were going to race in Michigan at Michigan International Speedway,” DeRouen said. “The second car we designed and built, the school required us to buy most of our items from Amazon and I had to order a race suit through Amazon.

“The school ordered the suit but had to ship it to us in Michigan. It turned out to be a go kart suit when what we needed was a three-layer fire suit.”

So DeRouen and his teammates, during finals week, scrambled to find the proper suit. He called everywhere in the Michigan and Ohio areas and was about to make a four-hour drive for a suit when he made a call to his current boss.

“I had called him before and he said he’d call me back but he didn’t,” DeRouen said. “I called him again and he told me he forgot to call me back. He told me he had a suit for me and I could come get it.

“It was a 45-minute trip instead of a four-hour one. When I got to the KohR Racing garage, I talked with the owner of the team for hours and at the end of the conversation, I asked for a job.”

DeRouen got the job and came back to UL for graduation with a job in Michigan waiting for him.

At KohR, DeRouen handles most of the race prep, in which the car is basically torn down, inspected and rebuilt for the next race. He handles most of the mechanical work and maintenance of the race car and then on race day he usually either handles fuel during the race or helps with tires.

“I’ve worked there for most of the 2019 season and the 2020 season,” DeRouen said.”It’s been an absolute blast. I’ve always liked to travel and see the country. To get to be able to do that and get paid for it has been way better than I expected.

“I always said that when I retire I wanted to travel and see the country,I I’m just doing it a lot earlier than I expected.”

Depending on how many series that the team races, DeRouen is on the road about 100-150 days a year. While he enjoys the engineering side, he would eventually like to get into the driver’s seat.

“I would like to drive,” DeRouen said. “But I do enjoy being on the engineering side and seeing how these cars work and perform. I would love to be like a Ken Miles one day. Most people know him from Ford vs. Ferrari and his work on the Ford GT.

“Kind of half engineer and half driver. Whether or not that will happen, we’ll have to see.”

One thing that DeRouen is happy for is his charity work for RP, which is Relapsing Polychondritis, a rare condition characterized by recurring inflamation to cartilage and other tissues throughout the body.

“We raise money for them and we also painted our cars for some races to raise awareness about the genetic condition,” DeRouen said. “It’s affected people I know and whatever I can do to help raise awareness and money for research I happily do.”

From taking apart toasters to taking apart and working on race cars, DeRouen has always had a love for the mechanical.

“To be able to do this for a living is absolutely incredible and I feel blessed to be able to do it.”